The scourge of unverified and spurious "penicillin allergy": a preventable clinical and public health menace.

Unverified and allergies to penicillins have developed into an epidemic with unacceptable medical and financial consequences. For over two decades numerous efforts have been undertaken to fight this scourge and to promote judicious diagnosis to reduce erroneous avoidance and unnecessary substitutions with less effective, more toxic and costly broad spectrum second-line non-betalactam antibiotics carrying the potential of the emergence of organism resistance and secondary complications. However, old habits die hard and continuous efforts are required to convince patients and their physicians of the consequences of these false allegations and to encourage implementation of correct management protocols. In this project we primarily aim at i) mapping out the prevalence of spurious and genuine penicillin allergy, ii) optimizing diagnostic management of betlactam allergies according to the individual allergy risk status including resolving the conundrum of cross-reactivity between penicillin and other belactams and iii) evaluate the cost-effectiveness of delabelling spurious "penicillin allergy" in unselected or selected populations. Altogether, our data should facilitate introduction of a cost-effective diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms without jeopardizing health of our patients and benefiting antibiotic stewardship.

Keywords:ALLERGIC DISEASES, ALLERGIES, DIAGNOSTIC TESTS

Disciplines:Immunology not elsewhere classified