Allergy to drugs is a category of adverse drug reaction (ADR) and affect 7%1 of the population and often result in hospitalisation. The current problem clinicians are facing is that it is difficult to diagnose drug allergy in patients as allergic mediators are often released and broken down before tests can be conducted. This is a predominant issue as false diagnosis can lead to the avoidance of a drug of choice and can lead to drugs being taken off the market. Therefore an accurate way of testing and predicting diagnosis of allergy to drugs is required.
The current gold standard for diagnosing allergy is through a Dose Provocation Test, which, involves administering the patient with the suspected drug, which patients are often apprehensive to do. In addition these tests often give false positives and have the risk of provoking an anaphylactic reaction putting the patient at risk. The alternative is testing blood samples and exposing blood to allergen and measuring inflammatory mediators. However, the process requires expensive equipment, large volumes of blood and a large time window. Because of this, a study into creating a rapid test to determine drug allergy would be extremely beneficial.
Engineering and the Environment
Biological Sciences
Faculty of Medicine