الفهرس 
Review of Literatureيوجد فقط 14 صفحة متاحة للعرض العام
المستخلص
SUMMARY
T
his analytical cross sectional study was conducted on a group of preschool children with physician diagnosed bronchial asthma following up at the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology unit, Children’s Hospital, Ain Shams University in the period from December 2018 to April 2019. Our aim was to investigate sensitization to timothy grass pollen (TGP) in a group of asthmatic Egyptian children and the possible cross activity with tomato and orange fruits as part of the food pollen syndrome.
The study included 100 asthmatic children; 62.0% were females and 38.0% were males. Their ages ranged between 2 and 6 years with a mean age of 4.65±1.14 years. Disease duration since diagnosis ranged from 0.67 to 5.5 years with a mean of 2.86±1.35 years.
The current study revealed high frequency of TGP sensitization representing 58% of the studied sample. The wheal diameter in the sensitized children ranged between 3 and 8 mm with a Mean±SD of 4.17±1.25. Only 2 of our subjects had wheal diameter of 8 mm and the rest of the sample had smaller wheals. Which denotes sensitization rather than allergy.
Timothy grass cross reactivity with tomato, in our study was present in 41% of patients while that with orange was detected in 13.8% of subjects. Alternaria Alternata SPT positivity correlated significantly with TGP sensitization. Children with concomitant urticarial or allergic rhinitis had higher rates of TGP sensitization. Also children with concomitant rhinosinusitis had larger TGP wheal diameters than the rest of the studied sample. The level of TGP sensitization was not influenced by the age, gender, level of control or duration of asthma.
It is concluded from our results that timothy grass pollen (TGP) is one of the sensitizing allergens in preschool asthma with significant cross reactivity to tomato and orange fruits. Our findings are limited by the sample size and consecutive manner of sampling. Larger studies with stratified non random sampling are recommended to overcome these limitations and evaluate the frequency of timothy grass pollen (TGP) sensitization and its relation to asthma expression and severity.