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Case Report
 

Selective Allergy to Lobster in a Case of Primary Sensitization to House Dust Mites
 

A Iparraguirre,1 R Rodríguez-Pérez,2 S Juste,1 A Ledesma,3 I Moneo,2 ML Caballero2

1Department of Allergology, Hospital General Yagüe, Burgos, Spain
2Department of Immunology, Hospital Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
3Department of Development, ALK-Abelló, Madrid, Spain
The first 2 authors have contributed equally to this article.

J Investig Allergol Clin Immunol 2009; Vol. 19(5): 409-413
 

 Abstract


Allergy to only 1 kind of seafood is uncommon. We report a case of selective allergy to lobster.
We studied a 30-year-old man who suffered generalized urticaria, facial erythema, and pharyngeal pruritus after eating lobster. He had a more than 10-year history of mild persistent asthma and sensitization to house dust mites. The study was performed by skin prick test, and prick-prick test, oral food challenge, specific immunoglobulin (Ig) E determinations by CAP (Phadia, Uppsala, Sweden) and ADVIA-Centaur (ALK-Abelló, Madrid, Spain), and IgE-immunoblotting.
The patient’s serum recognized 2 allergens of around 198 kDa and 2 allergens of around 65 kDa from the lobster extract, allergens of around 15, 90, and 120 kDa from Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus extract, and allergens of around 15 and 65 kDa from Dermatophagoides farinae extract. Serum did not recognize purified shrimp tropomyosin.
Immunoblot-inhibition assay results indicated cross-reactivity between lobster and mite allergens.
This is the first report of selective allergy to lobster.

Key words: Allergy. Immunoblotting. Lobster. House dust mites. Seafood allergy.