Health outcome · marker
Allergic sensitisation
Also: sensitisation, sensitization, atopy, specific IgE, skin prick test
The state of having made specific antibodies to an allergen, shown by a skin prick test or a blood test. It is a laboratory finding, not a disease: many sensitised people have no symptoms, and the finding marks readiness to react rather than reaction.
Why it matters indoors
Sensitisation is the step at which the indoor environment has its most specific influence, because what a person becomes sensitised to is largely what they lived with. The indoor allergens — dust mites, moulds, pets, cockroaches — are produced in the building and encountered daily for years, which is a quite different exposure pattern from a pollen season.
The relationship between amount and sensitisation is not simple, and the literature is genuinely divided. Higher allergen levels in the home predict sensitisation to that allergen in many studies; in others, early and abundant exposure — to pets and to farm environments particularly — is associated with less allergy rather than more.
Coridum treats it as a marker rather than an outcome in the clinical sense, and does not let a result about sensitisation stand in for a result about asthma or rhinitis. The caveat records which test was used and against which allergen.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) | outdoor exposure estimated at the address, not an indoor measurement | children with atopic dermatitis · city (ambient) | cohort of children with atopic dermatitis: early-life long-term exposure to ambient particulate matter estimated at the address and related to the course of the disease and to allergic sensitization | F-1519 The Impact of Early-Life, Long-Term Exposure to Ambient Part… (2025) | machine |
| Mould | prevalence 12.5 | First Nations school-age children · dwelling | cross-sectional survey with a clinical component (skin prick tests in 280 children) of 351 school-age First Nations children in two Saskatchewan communities, Canada: housing questionnaire against atopic and non-atopic asthma, adjusted multinomial logistic regression | F-0541 Domestic Risk Factors for Atopic and Non-Atopic Asthma in Fi… (2020) | machine |
| Mould | the equals sign is rendered as '5' in the text layer (P 5 .85 reads P = .85) | children aged 1-17 years with asthma or recurrent wheeze · dwelling | CHAMPIASTHMA multicentre cross-sectional observational study in Northern France: 424 children aged 1-17 years with recurrent wheeze or asthma stratified by parental-questionnaire exposure to moisture and/or mould (146 exposed), asthma control by GINA and ACT/pACT, exacerbations and mould sensitisation compared between groups | F-0554 Home exposure to moisture and mold is associated with poorer… (2025) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Allergic sensitisation. Coridum Knowledge G-0167, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0167/