[Predicting the clinical efficacy of house dust mite immunotherapy in bronchial asthmatics by multiple quantification...

To predict the clinical efficacy of house dust mite immunotherapy (IT) for bronchial asthma, clinical factors before IT were analyzed in relation to clinical efficacy. The factors analyzed were severity, skin test threshold, age at which IT was started, duration of asthma, onset of asthma, FEV1.0%, serum IgE levels before IT, the presence of allergens other than HD, family history of atopic disease, complications with other allergic diseases, sex, seasonality of attacks and the maintenance dose. The clinical efficacy ranging from good response to no benefit was well discriminated by this analysis. The rate of discrimination was about 90%, indicating clinical usefulness of the method. In this study, skin test threshold seemed to be the most important factor, followed by FEV1.0%. While severity and age have been reported to be important, those who show good FEV1.0% and low skin test threshold, regardless of their severity or age, may be good candidates for IT.