Study design and patients
In this retrospective database-study13 we included patients from the internal database (ACETOmed 1.6.35) who visited the Allergy Center Vienna West, Austria and were diagnosed as pollen-allergic based on clinical history and allergen-specific IgE levels >0.35 kU/l in ImmunoCAP (Thermo Fisher, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA) between October 2012 (first entry in this database) and the end of July 2016 (when the study was initiated).
For the single pollen analyses, patients with available IgE measurements for pollen extract (grass, birch, ash, mugwort or ragweed) and the respective major allergens (Phl p 1+5, Bet v 1, Ole e 1, Art v 1, Amb a 1) were included (Table 1). For analyses of double-sensitization, we detected both patients with IgE tests available for tree pollen extracts (birch and ash) and their respective major allergens and accordingly patients with IgE tests for both weeds extracts (mugwort, ragweed) and their major allergens.
The study was approved by the ethical committee of the Medical University Vienna (EK Nr.: 1857/2016). As it was a retrospective data-base study no informed consent was demanded.