Immunotherapy: a new horizon for egg allergy?

Abstract

Egg allergy is the second most frequent food allergy in children of the Western Countries, with an overall prevalence of 1-3%. Today strict avoidance diet is the only treatment, but its feasibility is difficult to obtain in childhood because of the large amount of egg proteins present in different foods. From 1998, a growing number of protocols on immunotherapy for egg allergy have been published, but all of them differ for patients' age, inclusion of high-risk patients, amount of allergen administered, duration of the protocols and presence of a control group. We reviewed the protocols performed in the last 15 years, to underline the most important issues in this kind of food immunotherapy, and the rates of tolerance or desensitization induction.