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Background: Red meat allergy is reported as a possible reason of allergic reactions in adults and children as well, however, the epidemiological data are biased by various factors. One of the most important group of meat proteins involved are serum proteins characterised by high cross-reactivity to serum proteins with remote animal species origin. Aim: Assessment of frequency of red meat allergy with the use of component resolved diagnostics in adults with a history of anaphylaxis and clinical characteristics of sensitized individuals. Material and methods: A prospective-observational study was designed for adults. The inclusion criteria were: at least one anaphylaxis in the past and lack of clear reason of that reaction after a detailed medical history, skin prick tests with food allergens. Other internal disorders mimicking anaphylaxis were considered as exclusion criteria. In all patients component resolved diagnostics (CRD) with the FABER test which enables an assessment of the presence of allergen-specific IgE against 244 extracts and allergen components, and the assessment of tolerance of red meat consumption was performed. Results: 28 adults (22 women and 6 men) at the mean age of 39 ± 14,6 yrs were enrolled into the study. Twelve (43%) survived more than one episode of anaphylaxis and 11 (39%) suffered from other allergic disorders. None of the enrolled patients showed a clear relationship of allergic symptoms with the red meat consumption. Specific IgE against multiple serum proteins were found in two patients (8%). All participants tolerated cooked, fried, and smoked red meat. Conclusions: Although red meat serum proteins seem to be a rare reason of sensitization in adults their high cross-reactivity and high biological and multifunctional potential must be seriously taken into account in all cases of idiopathic anaphylaxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider elliptic operators with measurable coefficients and Robin boundary conditions on a bounded domain Ω⊂ℝd{\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^{d}} and show that the first eigenfunction v satisfies v⁢(x)≥δ>0{v(x)\geq\delta>0} for all x∈Ω¯{x\in\overline{\Omega}}, even if the boundary ∂⁡Ω{\partial\Omega} is only Lipschitz continuous. Under such weak regularity assumptions the Hopf–Oleĭnik boundary lemma is not available; instead we use a new approach based on an abstract positivity improving condition for semigroups that map Lp⁢(Ω){L_{p}(\Omega)} into C⁢(Ω¯){C(\overline{\Omega})}. The same tool also yields corresponding results for Dirichlet or mixed boundary conditions. Finally, we show that our results can be used to derive strong minimum and maximum principles for parabolic and elliptic equations.