Sufferers of hypersensitivity to common antibiotics like penicillin and amoxicillin will soon find help with a new allergy detector, a low-cost, bio-photonic device that will be 6 times faster and 100 times more efficient than current technology, providing more targeted treatment for millions of patients.
Over 2.5 million people in Europe and more than 5.4 million Americans suffer from hypersensitivity to Beta Lactam Antibiotics (BLCs), the most commonly prescribed drugs that contain the penicillin family, with up to 10 percent of people reporting an allergy.
Despite its effectiveness, many people avoid penicillin and its relatives fearing a severe allergic reaction, where symptoms can include wheezing, coughing, breathing problems, tissue swelling, or in some serious cases anaphylaxis, requiring urgent medical attention.
Currently, anaphylaxis leads to 500–1,000 deaths per year in the United States, 20 deaths per year in the United Kingdom, and 15 deaths per year in Australia. It is thought that drugs may be accountable for as many as 1 in 2 anaphylactic deaths
With existing in-vitro allergy detection technology delivering a waiting time of over 3 hours and a cost of €30 per allergen, a team of European researchers running the Horizon 2020 project COBIOPHAD (‘Compact Biophotonic Platform for Drug Allergy Diagnosis’), aim to improve this with their scanning device employing the latest photonics technology.
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