Kounis syndrome: an update on epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis and therapeutic management

Abstract

Kounis syndrome has been established as a hypersensitivity coronary disorder induced by various conditions, drugs, environmental exposures, foods and coronary stents. Allergic, hypersensitivity, anaphylactic and anaphylactoid reactions are associated with this syndrome. Vasospastic allergic angina, allergic myocardial infarction and stent thrombosis with occluding thrombus infiltrated by eosinophils and/or mast cells constitute are the three reported, so far, variants of this syndrome. Apart from coronary arteries, it affects the cerebral and mesenteric arteries. Its manifestations are broadening and its etiology is continuously increasing. Kounis syndrome is a ubiquitous disease which represents a magnificent natural paradigm and nature's own experiment in a final trigger pathway implicated in cases of coronary artery spasm and plaque rupture. Kounis syndrome seems to be not a rare disease but an infrequently diagnosed clinical entity which has revealed that the same mediators released from the same inflammatory cells are also present and in acute coronary events of non allergic etiology. These cells are not only present in the culprit region before plaque erosion or rupture but they release their contents just before an actual coronary event. Therefore, awareness of etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis and clinical manifestations seems to be important for its prognosis, diagnosis, treatment, prevention.