[Immediate hypersensitivity to fruits and vegetables and pollenosis]

Various works have been published, mainly by Scandinavian authors, in which a partial immunological identity has been found to exist between birch pollen and hazelnut and apple. However, our attention has been particularly drawn to the high proportion of people who are allergic to the apple and other fruits, which in some cases has been as much as 50 and 70%, and in whom an oral pruritus alone is considered sufficient a symptom of allergies to certain foodstuffs. However due to the fact that the incidence of allergies to fruit in patients who suffer from pollen-related allergies is much lower in this area, being in the order of 7%, and because of the absence of birch, we decided to carry out our investigation in the opposite direction to that chosen by the Scandinavian researchers. That is to say, from the point of view of patients suffering from allergies to fruits and vegetables (these being the foodstuffs which most frequently produce allergic reactions in our own particular environment) we decided to investigate: 1) which foodstuffs, according to clinical history, are most frequently responsible for producing allergies; 2) their possible co-existence with pollen related allergies; 3) which pollens are responsible for producing a higher rate of positive results in patients; 4) and finally, by means of the RAST inhibition technique, to discover it a cross-reactivity might exist between these pollens and the peanut or the pea. We chose 40 patients (19 females and 21 males), between the ages of 5 and 49 years old, whose clinical history showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that they displayed symptoms of immediate hypersensitivity after the ingestion of certain fruits and/or vegetables. The technique employed in the skin tests was that of scratch of the skin from the backs of the patients (in a prone position), systematically using fresh natural foodstuffs, and at the same time trying to ensure that they were of the same type as those that had originally produced the above-mentioned symptoms in the patients. On 193 occasions we carried out passive transfers (the Prausnitz-Küstner method or P.K.), and on 13 patients we carried out oral provocative tests (cases with positive scratch and uncertain clinical histories). With regard to the pollens, we used glycerine-based antigens of the type: Lolium perenne, Olea europeae, Artemisia vulgaris and Parietaria officinalis of Dome/Hollister-Stier, and the Bencard gramineae.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)