Abstract
The detection and assay of specific IgE is done by immunological techniques using allergenic extracts as substrates as well as molecular allergens used as specific and/or predictive markers of clinical allergy. In France, four automated immunoassay instruments share the market for performing this assay routinely in the medical laboratory: the Phadia TM from Thermo Fisher Scientific® , the Immulite TM from Siemens®, the NOVEOS TM from HYCOR Biomedical® and the iSYS TM from IDS® . The purpose of this article is to describe the characteristics of routinely available immunoassay instruments for the determination of specific IgE and to show that although the different techniques are equivalent to each other in terms of repeatability, reproducibility and linearity, the specific IgE results obtained are correlated but not quantitatively identical. Therefore, when monitoring specific IgE levels, it is essential to use the same technique on the same instrument.