Serologic and skin tests for allergic responses to pharmacological agents must be made more specific to be of great value to the clinician, Harry F. Dowling, MD, of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, told the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Chicago in April. Our methods of preventing allergic reactions to drugs are woefully inadequate, Dowling said, and we need more specific means of gathering information from our patients.
Studies of hypersensitivity to drugs, for example penicillin, are good illustrations of the relationship that can develop between the clinician and the basic scientist, but there is a need for further cooperation in this field, the Chicago physician said. There is some information about the kind of reactions that occur, he said. When a physician observes the coincidence of penicillin therapy and the appearance of a reaction and then gives second courses of the antibiotic, he is