Allergies to antibiotics are the commonest form of medication allergies and, in the worst cases, can result in anaphylaxis and death. SINTEF is participating in the development of a new allergy test that will make it easier to provide patients with safe and correct treatments.

As many as ten per cent of the population say that they are allergic to the antibiotic penicillin, although the true figure is probably less than one per cent. Patient over–reporting means that many people who are in fact fully tolerant of penicillin are treated unnecessarily with other, universal, antibiotics which entail a higher risk for the development antibiotic–resistant bacteria.

“A quick and accurate allergy test will make it easy to identify allergy sufferers, and at the same time offer the most precise and effective treatments to those who are in fact tolerant of penicillin and other antibiotic drugs”, says Elizaveta Vereshchagina, a research scientist at SINTEF.

Elizaveta, together with her colleagues Erik Andreassen and Michal Mielnik, is responsible for the Norwegian contribution to the EU project COBIOPHAD, which has been set up with the aim of developing a quick, inexpensive and reliable technique for identifying allergic responses to beta–lactam antibiotics, including penicillin.

At present, there is no reliable test for the detection of allergies to antibiotics, and the methods used to detect other types of allergies are both expensive and time–consuming. Waiting times for the results of current blood tests for allergies are more than three hours, and the price for each allergen being tested is relatively high.

SINTEF is now participating with several European universities, research centres, and commercial companies to develop an allergy test which, if all goes to plan, will be ready to undergo clinical tests in hospitals in five years’ time. The test will enable a blood sample to be analysed in 30 minutes. The aim of the project is to reduce the cost per test for each allergen to ten per cent of current prices. The aim of the COBIOPHAD project is to develop a measuring device that can identify antibodies in blood samples using advanced photonic technology. The device under development is the size of a small laptop, and works by distributing the patient’s blood sample in small compartments built into a disc–shaped cartridge for analysis. The compartments contain a variety of allergens. If a patient is allergic, the allergens will react with the antibodies in the blood sample.

The reactions between the allergens (pre–loaded into the compartments) and the antibodies in the blood sample are measured by scanning the cartridge with a laser. When a reaction occurs, the device will detect the change and quantify it in the form of a measure of intensity of the patient’s allergic reaction.

The device will be able to test the patient’s blood for many medication allergies at the same time, because it is possible to pre–load several allergens in each compartment in the cartridge. Building several parallel compartments into each cartridge makes it possible to repeat the tests and thus achieve more reliable results.