Not all rhinitis patients are affected by an IgE-mediated inflammatory process. Skin and serum allergy assessments are limited in their ability to define LAR. Thus, patients with negative systemic allergy assessments comprise a mix of those who genuinely have NAR and LAR patients. Researchers did this study to determine the clinical characteristics of patients with NAR.
Researchers performed a cross-sectional study on consecutive adults with rhinitis symptoms who underwent turbinate surgery. NAR patients were defined by excluding allergy using systemic and local tests. AR patients were characterized by any positive systemic or local test toward aeroallergens.
The sample size consisted of 154 participants. NAR patients were older, had less self-reported asthma, and house dust inhalant trigger compared to AR patients. The CII score was similar for NAR and AR.
The study concluded that without asthma, older patients and lacked an inhalant allergy trigger were more likely to have actual NAR. Environmental triggers are not distinguishing NAR features. This may be used as a guide to identifying rhinitis patients whose symptoms are truly nonallergic etiology compared to those with falsely negative systemic allergy assessment but may still need management for LAR.
Reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1945892419850750
