Important factors in the nasal manifestation of allergy

Zusammenfassung

Zur Klärung der Frage, ob Histamin durch Antigene von der Oberfläche der Nasenschleimhaut in ausreichender Menge produziert werden kann, um eine nasale Allergie zu manifestieren, und zur Feststellung, welcher der drei Faktoren: Zahl der basophilen Zellen der Oberfläche, Histaminfreisetzung dieser Zellen oder Histaminsensibilität der Schleimhaut für den Grad der nasalen Allergenprovokation der wichtigste ist, werden die allergeninduzierte Histaminfreisetzung, die Zahl der basophilen Zellen sowie die Histaminsensibilität der Schleimhaut bestimmt. Es zeigte sich, daß, in der genannten Reihenfolge die Histaminfreisetzung, die Zahl der basophilen Zellen und die Histaminempfindlichkeit der Schleimhaut entscheidend sind und eine nasale Provokationsreaktion hervorrufen.

Summary

To elucidate whether or not histamine can be released by antigen from the nasal surface layer in sufficient quantities to produce nasal manifestation of allergy and which among three factors, i.e., the number of surface basophilic cells, the histamine release from these cells, or the mucosal histamine sensitivity, is the most responsible for the degree of nasal allergen provocation, we determined the allergen-induced histamine release from specimens of the mucus-epithelial layer of patients with nasal allergy and also counted the number of basophilic cells in these specimens after staining by Hansel's method. In addition, we evaluated the histamine sensitivity of the mucosa by the end-point test.

The net histamine content released from the specimens of the nasal surface ranged from 25.5–310.7 μg/cm³, which was found to be sufficient to produce nasal manifestation of allergy. The correlation coefficients were calculated as the relationships between the degree of provocation reaction and the level of histamine released from the nasal surface, the basophilic cell number, histamine releasability and histamine reactivity. These values were 0.645, 0.440, 0.481, and 0.155, respectively, and, when they were analyzed statistically, the most significant correlations to the degree of provocation reaction were found to be those between the degree of provocation reaction and the histamine content released from the nasal surface, the basophilic cell number, or the histamine releasability and histamine reactivity (p<0.01), in that order.