Prevalence of Heat Shock Protein in Patients with Meniere's Disease and Allergy

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

The study purpose was to investigate the prevalence of elevated heat shock protein 70 (HSP-70) in patients with Meniere's disease who have milk allergy compared with those who are not allergic to milk.

METHODS:

Fifty-five patients with Meniere's disease and allergy in whom milk allergy had been confirmed by intradermal progressive dilutional food testing or skin testing to milk antigen were included. Blood serum was tested for HSP-70 elevation with a Western blot assay using bovine renal extract. The 29 women and 26 men ranged in age from 29 to 76 years (mean age 52.8 years). Forty percent of the patients had bilateral Meniere's disease.

RESULTS:

Overall prevalence of HSP-70 elevation was 29.1%. This was higher in bilateral patients (50%) than unilateral patients (15%) (P ≤ 0.007). The effect was based primarily on elevated HSP-70 in bilateral (62.5%) and unilateral (7.7%) patients in those with no milk allergy (P ≤ 0.006). The prevalence of HSP-70 elevation was actually lower in those with milk allergy (19.2%) than in those with no milk allergy (37.9%). This difference was statistically significant only in the subset of patients who were <50 years old (0% vs 33.3%, respectively; P ≤ 0.04).

CONCLUSIONS:

We found no relationship between the presence of antibodies to HSP-70 and allergy to milk. The significance of elevated HSP-70 in patients with Meniere's disease has yet to be defined.