Allergenicity of Artemisia contained in bee pollen is proportional to its mass

SUMMARY

Bee product mugwort is identified as being at the origin of allergic accidents but the biological potency of Artemisia contained in bee pollen is not well known. In this experiment, Artemisia mass was identified in bee pollen mass and after having calculated the proportion of Artemisia using the bee pollen melissopalynology spectrum. Skin reactivity to Artemisia was assessed by measuring wheal diameters (W) from skin prick tests using three serial dilutions of bee pollen on 11 allergic patients to Artemisia, in order to calculate the relationship between Artemisia mass (Mass _artemisia) in bee pollen and skin reactivity. The dose-response power regression curve (W _artemisia) = 3.328 (Mass _artemisia)^0.297 (R2 = 0.9947) and the linear function Log10 (W _artemisia) = 0.297 (Log10 (Mass _artemisia) + 0.520 (R =0.9974)) were established using a bee pollen sample with 0.246 mg of Artemisia pollen per mg. Mugwort allergens seem to be little or not altered by bee secretions and bee pollen retains its allergenic capacity. To our knowledge this is the first time it has been shown that skin reactivity of patients allergic to mugwort is proportional to the absolute mugwort mass contained in the bee pollen.