The Middle Ear: A Major Target of Upper Respiratory Tract Allergic Disease

The diagnosis and treatment of chronic otitis media with effusion (OME)has been a long-standing conundrum in medical practices.Why? Partly because past studies provide little support of a relation of allergy to otitis mediate due to the poor sensitivity of earlier methodology for determining atopy.In order to understand the inflammatory processes that allow OME to persist it is essential to characterize the cellular constituents and their degree of activity in the diseased middle ear.