Publication Date
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Larry G. Arlian (Advisor), David L. Goldstein (Other), Barbara Hull (Committee Member), John O. Stireman (Committee Member), Joseph F. Thomas, Jr. (Other)
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Abstract
Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus and Dermatophagoides farinae are commercially cultured to produce materials to make extracts for diagnostic tests and immunotherapy. There is some speculation as to how the culture conditions such as time of culture, temperature, relative humidity and food might influence the mite populations and subsequent production of allergens. The purpose of our investigation was to see how temperature influenced the population growth and allergen production of cultured house dust mites. D. pteronyssinus and D. farinae were cultured at 20°C and 25°C. Samples were collected at two week intervals for live mite count, life stage composition and to determine Group 1 and Group 2 allergen concentrations. We saw that temperature did have an influence and that both species showed higher population growth rates and produced higher concentrations of Group 1 and Group 2 allergens than at 25°C compared to 20°C.
Page Count
144
Department or Program
Department of Biological Sciences
Year Degree Awarded
2009
Copyright
Copyright 2009, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may be modified only if the modified version is distributed with these same permissions. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
