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Penicillin Allergy Not Always Accurate |
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CINCINNATI—If you think that you are allergic to penicillin, ask yourself this: How do you know? |
Unless
you’ve had the allergy confirmed by a health care professional, you can’t
know for certain. People often believe they are allergic to penicillin for many
reasons: Maybe they were told by their parent as a child or had a reaction such
as a rash that occurred when they had a virus or were taking other medications.
Now,
for the first time, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of
Medicine have looked at the inaccuracy of self-reported penicillin allergies as
an issue critical to emergency care. |
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Prior
allergy studies already place the inaccuracy of self-reporting a penicillin
allergy at around 85 percent. What emergency medicine researchers found was that
the number of people who reported a history of being allergic to penicillin but
did not react when skin tested was slightly higher—91 percent. The study also
concluded that testing for penicillin allergy using skin tests in an emergency
department setting was feasible and could allow for more appropriate antibiotic
selection in certain cases. Among
the advantages: Penicillin, the first antibiotic discovered, is less expensive;
it’s clinically effective in combating bacterial infections such as strep; and
it lessens the use of broad-based antibiotics, which contribute to bacterial
resistance, say study co-authors Joseph Moellman, MD, department of emergency
medicine, and Jonathan Bernstein, MD, department of internal medicine, division
of immunology, allergy section. The
study, an interdisciplinary effort, involved penicillin skin testing, which was
administered to consenting patients who self-reported a penicillin allergy in
the University Hospital emergency department. Out of 150 participants,
137 displayed false positives; meaning they did not react adversely to
penicillin testing. The
implications, both Moellman and Bernstein say, are that a vast majority of the
patient population in the emergency department could be feasibly tested and
prescribed penicillin. The
study was funded by the University of Cincinnati Emergency Department Resident
Research Program. This program is supported by donations from UC emergency
medicine faculty and alumni. |
| Source: http://www.uc.edu |
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