الفهرس 
Pollen AllergyOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background
Pollen constitutes a major source of atmospheric pollution causing a number of allergic disorders like rhinitis, conjunctivitis, dermatitis and asthma among the people living around the world. Although that, there is little information about the relative prevalence of these conditions in populations with different pollen exposures.
Aim of the work
The current study was carried out to evaluate the prevalence of sensitization against pollen allergens as assessed by skin prick tests in Egyptian children having allergic diseases like; asthma, allergic rhinitis, allergic dermatitis and allergic conjunctivitis, in order to improve the management strategies.
Subjects & Methods
This cross sectional study included 60 children aged 5 to 15 years and suffering from one or more of allergic diseases such as bronchial asthma, allergic rhinitis (AR), atopic dermatitis (AD), and allergic conjunctivitis (AC).
Our studied patients were chosen randomly from those attending the pediatric allergy out clinic of Damanhur National Medical Institute and Shatby University Hospital for children from May 2011 to March 2012.
Our studied patients were subjected to:
1) A detailed allergic history and thorough clinical examination.
2) Estimation of serum total IgE level.
3) Skin prick test that was carried out to all atopic patients with standardized allergen extracts and validated method against the following nine common pollen allergens: Mix grass, Grasses cereals, Mugwort, Bermuda grass, Short Ragweed, Sweet vernal grass, Sheep sorrel, English plantain, and Willow.
4) Asthmatic children in our study were investigated with PFM.
Results
Our results showed that:
1) There is a low prevalence of pollen sensitization among studied atopic Egyptian children (16.66%).
2) Pollen apparently seems to play a triggering role in the development of polysensitization, as polysensitization was recorded more frequently than monosensitization (70% vs. 30%) in our sensitized studied patients.
3) The most predominant SPT positivity was with Grasses cereals (80%), followed by Bermuda (60%), Mix grass (50%), Short Ragweed (40%), Mugwort and Sweet vernal grass (30%), English plantain and Willow (20%) and the least predominant was with Sheep sorrel (10%).
4) Among the sensitized patients, 100% had positive SPT to at least one grass allergen, 40% to at least one weed allergen and 20% to willow allergen which is the only allergen belonging to tree pollens in our study. So, we could consider that sensitizations to grasses were more common than Weeds in our study.
5) There is no significant association between specific type of pollen allergen and specific type of allergy.
6) There is a large sample of asthmatic children (63.3%) among our studied patients, in comparison with allergic rhinitis (45%), allergic dermatitis (33.3%) and allergic conjunctivitis (18.3%).
7) There is no significant risk prediction between sex, pollen exposure, clinical diagnosis and increased total IgE level
8) According to skin prick test results, our patients were divided into 2 groups; positive (10/60) and negative (50/60) groups. Comparison between the two groups showed that there is:
Statistical significant correlation between Age, pollen exposure and SPT positivity.
No significant correlation between sex and SPT reactivity.
No significant relationship of SPT positivity with asthma, allergic rhinitis, conjunctivitis and dermatitis.
No significant correlation between total IgE level and specific IgE detected by skin prick test.
A significant correlation between pollen sensitization and severity of asthma, as PEF percentage of predicted was significantly higher in asthmatic patients of the negative group than in those of the positive group.