Plasma-derived extracellular vesicles discriminate type-1 allergy subjects from non-allergic controls

Allergies are on the rise globally, with an enormous impact on affected individuals' quality of life as well as health care resources. They cause a wide range of symptoms, from slightly inconvenient to potentially fatal immune reactions. While allergies have been described and classified phenomenologically, there is an unmet need for easily accessible biomarkers to stratify the severity of clinical symptoms. Furthermore, biomarkers marking the success of specific immunotherapy are urgently needed.

Plasma extracellular vesicles (pEV) play a role in coordinating the immune response and may be useful future biomarkers. A pilot study on differences in pEV content was carried out between patients with type I allergy, suffering from rhinoconjunctivitis with or without asthma, and voluntary non-allergic donors.

We examined pEV from 38 individuals (22 patients with allergies and 16 controls) for 38 chemokines, cytokines, and soluble factors using high-throughput data mining approaches.

Patients with allergies had a distinct biomarker pattern, with 7 upregulated (TNF-alpha, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-17F, CCL2, and CCL17) and 3 downregulated immune mediators (IL-11, IL-27, and CCL20) in pEV compared to controls. This reduced set of 10 factors was able to discriminate controls and allergic patients better than the total array.

The content of pEV showed potential as a target for biomarker research in allergies. Plasma EV, which are readily measurable via blood test, may come to play an important role in allergy diagnosis. In this proof-of-principle study, it could be shown that pEV's discriminate patients with allergies from controls. Further studies investigating whether the content of pEVs may predict the severity of allergic symptoms or even the induction of tolerance to allergens are needed.