Skip to main content

P03 - Mould allergy in children with allergic rhinitis in a seaside agricultural region

Objective

Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a major chronic respiratory disease due to its prevalence, impact on quality of life (QL), economic burden, link with asthma. During the last years, many countries have experienced an increase in the prevalence of respiratory allergy. A significant contribution in development of AR, in addition to house dust mite, cockroaches, dogs, cats, pollen and trees, seems to have mould allergens. Alternaria is predominantly an outdoor allergen favouring damp spots, and most indoor concentrations may derive from outdoor primary sources.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective case-note review of all children seen in the allergy clinic during a nine months period, with a potential diagnosis of allergic rhinitis.

Results

138 children, aged 3 to 16 years have been seen in our allergy outpatient department during a period of 9 month, for moderate / severe allergic rhinitis, according to ARIA classification. 53 from them were female and 85 male. Skin prick test (SPT) has been performed and they were tested for most common inhalant allergens for our region including wall pellitory, dust mite, grass mix, cat and dog, olive, Aspergilus species, Cladosporium and Alternaria standardized extract.

Twenty four children (17,4%) had a positive SPT to at least one of the three mould allergens investigated. Twelve children (8,7%) have been monosensitized only to Alternaria while 11 polysensitized ( 8%). Only one child was sensitized to Cladosporium, being sensitized to olive too. Previous studies showed for Greece, around 10% sensitization to moulds.

Conclusion

The high frequency of sensitization to Alternaria (16,6%) in our region could be explained by the high level of humidity (range up to 95%) due to its location, near sea-coast. Another reason could be the intensive cultivation of tomato and other legume in our region while the indoor source remains an important one.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Feketea, G., Danidi, T. P03 - Mould allergy in children with allergic rhinitis in a seaside agricultural region. Clin Transl Allergy 4 (Suppl 1), P58 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/2045-7022-4-S1-P58

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/2045-7022-4-S1-P58

Keywords