The Storage Mite Story

When allergists in the beginning of the 1960s started to question that house dust was one defined allergen some of them initiated microscopic investigations of house dust samples. They noticed that house dust samples often contained a great variety of mite species, and that in many cases non-pyroglyphid mites were dominating. These mites are now often referred to as storage mites. However, since dust samples from private homes most consistently contained pyroglyphid mites, the Dermatophagoides mites were given the highest priority and the storage mites were somewhat forgotten. Since then extensive work have been performed on the isolation, characterization and clinical importance of Dermatophagoides allergens.