| Takeshi Sawazaki | Development Gr., Pharmaceutical Div., |
| Hiroo Watanabe | Research and Development Div., Life Science Center, |
Allergy tests consist of skin testing and in vitro testing. Currently, in vitro testing is more prevalent because it is easy to use and less burden on the patient's body compared to skin testing. Out of the in vitro testing methods, measuring specific IgE antibodies in the blood is used most widely because it is a simple method that provides quantitative result. The first big step in allergy treatment is to identify the allergen. To identify an allergen, specific IgE antibody tests are gaining a lot of attention. Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd.'s allergy diagnostic reagents can measure 26 allergen-specific IgE antibodies from 200 µL of blood serum. Now we are developing new reagents that increase the number of measurable allergens in a 200-µL sample to 34 and to shorten the measurement time by over half. Research is advancing to discover allergy onset-related genes. In the future ethical and social policies to govern allergy gene testing will be formulated and allergy gene screening will likely become a mainstream diagnostic tool.
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Hitachi Chemical Diagnostics, Inc. |
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WORLD ALLERGY ORGANIZATION |
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RIKEN |
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The Hitachi Hyoron (Japanese Only) |
allergy, diagnosis, screening, IgE, SNP
