Allergy to Olea europaea pollen: relationship between skin prick tests, RAST, ELISA and bronchial provocations tests

Olea Europaea is the most important allergenic tree in Southern Italy and in the Naples area. Its pollination period lasts from the middle of April to the end of June. In our pollinosis patients we observed frequency of sensitization of 13.05% to Olea pollen. That means that this pollen follows Parietaria (47.80%) and Gramineae (34.70%) regarding the frequency of allergic sensitization. In an attempt to evaluate the degree of allergic sensitization to Olea pollen and the concordance of various tests, we studied 24 asthmatic patients with skin positivity to only this pollen using commercially available allergen extracts and reagents. The patients were examined by SPT, RAST, ELISA and BPT with allergen. Our study has shown that there is no relationship between the results of SPT and Phadebas RAST; a slight relationship between SPT and Phadezym RAST, and a very good relationship between Phadebas and Phadezym RAST. Bronchial challenge with Olea extract was positive in all patients. These results may be interpreted considering the low degree of purification of Olea pollen extracts available commercially.