Hypersensitivity reactions to drugs: correlation between clinical probability score and laboratory diagnostic procedures.

The in vitro diagnosis of allergic drug reactions have not made significant progress in recent years. Specific stimulation of lymphocytes from allergic patients represents an approach to demonstrating sensitization to the implicated drug. So far, skin tests and RAST can only be applied to a limited number of situations. The purpose of this study was to standardize the clinical criteria in order to establish a clinical probability score for each drug. Independently, the various laboratory procedures mentioned were compared with the established clinical probability score for each drug. The results showed that, for the few common drugs studied, the correlation between the clinical probability score and the results of the in vitro lymphocyte transformation test was significant. A significant correlation between the clinical probability score and the skin tests was only shown for penicillin and its derivatives.