We performed a comparison between leukocyte migration tests performed by the chemotaxis chamber method (LMTchamber) and the agarose plate method (LMT-agarose) to study the usefulness of the LMT-chamber method in the identification of causative drugs in drug allergies.
For LMT-agarose,the positive rate among 210 patients suspected of hypersensitivity to drugs (subject patients) was 67.6 % and for the LMT-chamber the positive rate among 197 subject patients was 81.2%,a significantly higher positive rate for the latter (p<0.001,χ²-test).The positive rate for LMT-agarose was 6.9% in 102 patients without hypersensitivity to drugs (control patients) and 9.8% for the LMT-chamber in 82 control patients,but this difference was not significant.In addition,the LMT-chamber produced a higher positive rate than LMT-agarose for all hypersensitivity symptoms and all efficacy categories of the suspected drugs.It also produced a significantly higher positive rate than LMT-agarose in subject patients without addition of self serum (p<0.05,χ²-test) and there were no significant differences between males and females or young and old persons,as there were in the case of LMT-agarose.
Our findings indicate that the LMT-chamber may be more sensitive than LMT-agarose in identifying the causative drug in drug allergies and more useful than LMT-agarose for many hypersensitivity symptoms and suspected drugs.In addition,the LMT-chamber is much less influenced than LMT-agarose as regards patient’s own serum,or by sex and age.