+
For Healthcare Professionals
Welcome! Click here for Healthcare or Laboratory Professional content
✕
Are you a healthcare professional?

The information in this website is intended only for healthcare professionals. By entering this site, you are confirming that you are a healthcare professional.

Enter Site
✕

Robert

Robert is an 18-year-old who loves video games and playing basketball with his friends. Recently, Robert was rushed to the emergency department when he started having difficulty breathing, began coughing and sweating, and felt his throat tighten and his lips swell. Robert has a birch allergy and is used to having a stuffy nose and itchy red eyes during tree pollen season—and an itchy mouth when eating apple—but he’d never had a systemic reaction before. What happened to Robert?

During a follow-up appointment, Robert’s healthcare professional asked what he had done and eaten the day he had the reaction. Robert said he played basketball at his friends’ house, and then they ate some shrimp salad and drank some soy milk. Robert’s healthcare professional suspected that he might have an undiagnosed allergy and orders both a whole allergen blood test and an allergen components test for soy.    

Robert’s Results

The results of the ImmunoCAPTM Whole Allergen and ImmunCAPTM Allergen Components tests, combined with his medical history, suggest Robert has a birch allergy and a pollen-related soy allergy, because of a cross-reaction between birch pollen and a protein found in soy. Robert needs to avoid large amounts of soy, like in soy milk, but doesn’t need to worry about avoiding all foods that may have “hidden” soy in them. His healthcare professional also told Robert to continue taking antihistamines and nasal steroids during pollen season to address his birch pollen allergy. 

Tree Pollen

Oral Allergy Syndrome

Seafood

Soy

Am I Allergic?

Why it’s important to know

If Robert had undergone an allergen components test earlier, he could have been properly diagnosed, without the stress and risk associated with a systemic reaction. Sometimes allergy symptoms seem to come out of nowhere. Understanding what’s causing your symptoms can help you get relief now, and avoid more serious issues in the future. Be sure to consult with your healthcare professional.

Learn more about testing

The people, places and events depicted in these photographs do not represent actual patients, nor are they affiliated in any way with the attached case study or Thermo Fisher Scientific.