Dust mite allergens

Abstract

There can be few tasks in biological research messier than emptying a vacuum cleaner bag of dust, sieving it and preparing an aqueous suspension in order to make allergen extracts or remove mites. The fine grey powder gets everywhere and is not very wettable. It sticks to glassware, and the smell of old house dust and decomposing skin scales is like a mixture of the rancid fat of dirty kitchens and the mustiness of neglected libraries. In the 1920s and 1930s it was thought house dust contained a single allergen. Making aqueous extracts of house dust would have been a standard method. By the 1950s, it was becoming clear that house dust contained a complex mixture of allergens (see Voorhorst et al., 1969). By the late 1960s dust mites were known to be a major component of this mix. By the early 1970s it had been determined that the faecal pellets of dust mites contained allergens. Halmai and Alexander (1971) isolated faecal pellets from the bodies of mites using a micromanipulator and used them in skin-prick tests to demonstrate their allergenicity. In 1981, Tovey et al. discovered that mite faeces were a major source of the dust mite allergen Der p 1.