Future therapies for food allergy

Abstract

In the past two decades, food allergy has emerged as an important public health issue in countries with a western life-style. Current management of food allergy relies on dietary avoidance and there is no therapy proven to restore permanent oral tolerance to food. This review focuses on novel approaches to allergen-specific therapy for IgE-mediated food allergy. Oral immunotherapy alone or in combination with anti-IgE antibody is likely to advance into clinical practice in the more immediate future. However, these approaches have to be further validated in large clinical trials before entering clinical practice. Diets containing extensively heated (baked) milk and egg for the majority of milk- and egg-allergic patients represent a safer alternative approach to food oral immunotherapy and are already changing the paradigm of strict dietary avoidance for majority of milk and egg-allergic children.