The Rate of Absorption of Ragweed Pollen Material from the Nose

Abstract

Summary: A Prausnitz-Küstner reaction was performed with the serum of a patient highly sensitive to ragweed on 50 non-atopic subjects and 12 patients with asthma, hay fever, or vasomotor rhinitis, nine of whom gave skin reactions by scratch tests. The patients were not naturally sensitive to ragweed. Twenty-four hours later the pollen was blown into both nostrils of the non-atopic and atopic subjects and the sites of injections observed for the appearance of redness and wheal formation. The absorption time of the non-atopic subjects varied from fourteen minutes to thirty-one minutes, while that of the 9 sensitive subjects giving a skin reaction showed a marked delay, ranging from forty-seven minutes to no reaction after two hours. The other three with negative skin tests reacted like the non-atopics.