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Allergens Travel In Cat Owners' Clothes
JACI
11/21/2000
By Anne MacLennan
Cat owners' clothing is both an important source of cat allergen and a carrier of it to otherwise cat-free environments, a study suggests.
Indeed, in the course of a working day, the level of cat allergen on the clothing of people who do not live with a cat or cats increases significantly, these authors note.
Because clothing has been proposed as a source of exposure to mite and cat allergens and as a distributor of allergen to public places, this study looked at the contribution of various types of clothing on exposure in a domestic environment. The ability of clothing to transfer allergen in a workplace was also investigated.
Although the amount of mite and cat allergen inhaled was found to differ among clothing types and according to whether they had been washed recently, a wool sweater increased personal exposure to cat allergen about 11 times and to mite allergen about 10 times.
Less versus more frequently washed clothing was found to carry more allergen whether assessed by vacuuming or adhesive tape, and this corresponded to the amount of allergen inhaled.
Personal exposure to mite and cat allergen from a range of clothing items was measured via intranasal air samples in 11 homes, and five categories of clothing were tested.
Wearing no upper clothing was the sixth category tested so as to distinguish the contribution of clothing over ambient background exposure.
An adhesive tape was used to sample allergen from the surface of clothing, and reservoir dust samples were also collected. These same techniques were used to examine the amount of cat allergen transferred in the workplace from owners to non-owners of cats.
The authors suggest these findings strongly support the emerging model that personal clothing is a key source of both mite and cat allergen exposure and demonstrate the importance of clothing as a means of distributing cat allergen.
J Allergy Clin Immunol 2000;106:874-9.
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