Recent advances in food allergy (original) (raw)
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Food Allergies: New Challenges of Our Civilization
Allergic Disease - New Developments in Diagnosis and Therapy
People need to eat and digest food, and if they encounter a food allergy it is a real problem. Moreover, some people have a lifelong sensitization to certain products with the threat of anaphylaxis. This chapter considers different aspects of food allergies, allergenicity of dietary allergens, the significance of the gut microbiota and intestinal epithelium integrity, detailed processes of food sensitization, clinical phenotypes and management of food allergies, and, finally, mechanisms of oral tolerance. Fortunately, the gastrointestinal tract possesses robust tolerogenic mechanisms, in particular, the beneficial gut microbiota, as well as the autonomous enteric nervous system, which taken together with the gut immune cells and molecules may be called the enteric neuroimmune system (ENIS). The dual-allergen exposure hypothesis postulates that early oral exposure to food allergens induces tolerance, whereas exposure at non-gastrointestinal sites results in food sensitization and all...
The rise of food allergy: Environmental factors and emerging treatments
EBioMedicine, 2016
Food allergy has rapidly increased in prevalence, suggesting an important role for environmental factors in disease susceptibility. The immune response of food allergy is characterized by IgE production, and new findings from mouse and human studies indicate an important role of the cytokine IL-9, which is derived from both T cells and mast cells, in disease manifestations. Emerging evidence suggests that route of exposure to food, particularly peanut, is important. Exposure through the skin promotes sensitization while early exposure through the gastrointestinal tract promotes tolerance. Evidence from mouse studies indicate a role of the microbiome in development of food allergy, which is supported by correlative human studies showing a dysbiosis in food allergy. There is no approved treatment for food allergy, but emerging therapies are focused on allergen immunotherapy to provide desensitization, while pre-clinical studies are focused on using adjuvants or novel delivery approaches to improve efficacy and safety of immunotherapy.
Food Allergy: Recent Advances in Pathophysiology and Diagnosis
Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 2011
Approximately 5% of young children and 3–4% of adults exhibit adverse immune responses to foods in westernized countries, with a tendency to increase. The pathophysiology of food allergy (FA) relies on immune reactions triggered by epitopes, i.e. small amino-acid sequences able to bind to antibodies or cells. Some food allergens share specific physicochemical characteristics that allow them to resist digestion, thus enhancing allergenicity. These allergens encounter specialized dendritic cell populations in the gut, which leads to T-cell priming. In case of IgE-mediated allergy, this process triggers the production of allergen-specific IgE by B cells. Tissue-resident reactive cells, including mast cells, then bind IgE, and allergic reactions are elicited when these cells, with adjacent IgE molecules bound to their surface, are re-exposed to allergen. Allergic reactions occurring in the absence of detectable IgE are labeled non-IgE mediated. The abrogation of oral tolerance which lea...
Food Allergy: molecular and clinical practice
2017
Food allergy is an adverse immunological reaction to allergens present in food. Up to 4% adults and 8% children are affected by food allergy. The increase in allergic diseases to food has led to the need for better diagnostics and more effective therapeutic approaches. This book describes the molecular biology and immunology of major food allergens, from laboratory based science to clinical immunology, encompassing novel characterisation and quantification methods, the application of recombinant food allergens in molecular diagnosis and the development of novel therapeutics. This book is the ideal reference tool for researchers, students and allergy clinicians to accurately diagnose and manage food allergies.
Factors influencing the incidence and prevalence of food allergy
Allergy, 2009
There is now substantial evidence that the prevalence of sensitization to common allergens has increased markedly over the last half century, with a consequent increase in the prevalence of atopic disease. There is also some evidence that sensitization to food has increased (1-3). This is important because reactions to food allergens can be particularly severe and there are implications for food safety.
Food Allergy: Temporal Trends and Determinants
Current Allergy and Asthma Reports, 2012
This review summarizes studies discussing temporal trends in the prevalence of food allergy as well as potential factors associated with the development of food allergy. In addition, we will address the potential hypotheses accounting for the apparent increase in food allergy prevalence. Studies suggest increased prevalence of food allergy. However, relatively little is known about its pathogenesis. This review aims to assess temporal trends in the prevalence of food allergy and discuss potential genetic, environmental, and demographic determinants. The search strategy examined the medical literature database MEDLINE (using PubMed) for the time period of January 1, 2002 to January 31, 2012. In recent decades, the prevalence of food allergy in general has increased by 0.60 % [95 % confidence interval (CI), 0.59 %-0.61 %] and the prevalence of peanut allergy by 0.027 % (95 % CI, 0.026 %-0.028 %), but it has now likely stabilized in developed countries. Genes, the environment, and demographic characteristics play a role in the pathogenesis of food allergy. Numerous environmental and demographic factors as well as gene-environment interactions may account for this increase in prevalence, but further studies are required to tease out their relative contribution.
Food Allergy: An Important Health Hazard
International Journal of Food and Fermentation Technology, 2019
An adverse reaction to a food or food component that involves the immune system is called as food allergy. Food allergies are most often immunoglobulin E (IgE) mediated but may also be non-IgE or cell-mediated. On exposure of a sensitive individual to a particular food, the allergen stimulates lymphocytes to produce the IgE-antibody and attached to the surface of the mast cells in different tissues of the body. However, non-IgE mediated food allergy is observed in the first few years of life and it is an easily treatable clinical entity. Food allergy is of several types but Type I, Type II, Type III and Type IV are of key importance. The most common foods having allergens are peanuts, milk, eggs, tree nuts, fish, soybean, wheat etc and these foods account for about 90% of all allergic reactions in humans. People suffering from food allergy can undergo several problems such as digestive disorders, respiratory and circulatory symptoms, skin reactions and sometimes anaphylactic shock. Food processing such as ultrafiltration in milk, steam cooking of kiwi fruits and peeling of peaches may reduce the food allergens up to a certain extent. Therefore, it is utmost important to create awareness in people towards food allergy and save the precious life.
Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America, 2012
Much has been learned by identifying the molecules that can be recognized by IgE from patients with allergies. Increasingly, by correlating patterns of sensitization with clinical features, it has become possible to distinguish molecules responsible for primary sensitization (complete allergens) from those that are more likely cross-reactive targets. In the case of animal allergens, evolutionary distance seems to be an important factor in determining allergenicity. However, until more is understood regarding the mechanistic details of primary sensitization, including the participation of molecules that stimulate innate immune responses and the repertoire of T-cell antigens, molecules that may or may not themselves be important B-cell antigens, we will not be able to explain fundamental questions, such as why peanut allergy is more severe than soy allergy or why tick exposure is associated with clinically relevant sensitization to a carbohydrate epitope.
Recent advances in mechanisms of food allergy and anaphylaxis
F1000Research, 2020
Food allergens are innocuous proteins that promote tolerogenic adaptive immune responses in healthy individuals yet in other individuals induce an allergic adaptive immune response characterized by the presence of antigen-specific immunoglobulin E and type-2 immune cells. The cellular and molecular processes that determine a tolerogenic versus non-tolerogenic immune response to dietary antigens are not fully elucidated. Recently, there have been advances in the identification of roles for microbial communities and anatomical sites of dietary antigen exposure and presentation that have provided new insights into the key regulatory steps in the tolerogenic versus non-tolerogenic decision-making processes. Herein, we will review and discuss recent findings in cellular and molecular processes underlying food sensitization and tolerance, immunological processes underlying severity of food-induced anaphylaxis, and insights obtained from immunotherapy trials.