Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Jan;88(1):66-76.
doi: 10.1007/s00239-019-09895-3. Epub 2019 Jun 7.

Allergy in an Evolutionary Framework

Affiliations
Review

Allergy in an Evolutionary Framework

Alvaro Daschner et al. J Mol Evol. 2020 Jan.

Abstract

Respiratory allergy including bronchial asthma and food allergy have gained epidemic character in the last decades in industrialized countries. Much has been learned with respect to the pathophysiology of allergic disease and this has facilitated specific therapies. Allergy is a chronic disease, and being so prevalent claims to search for evolutionary causes of the general susceptibility of humans as a species to react to environmental antigens in a Th2 type immune reaction with IgE production. In an evolutionary analysis of Allergy, necessary questions addressed in this review are "Why does IgE exist or why did IgE evolve?" as well as from the point of view of the mismatch hypothesis, "Why is there an Allergy epidemic?" Recent studies on the possible biological and protective role of IgE against parasites, arthropods, venoms or toxins are challenging the widely accepted definition of allergens as generally innocuous antigens. Combining the immunologic danger model and the toxin hypothesis for allergies, the allergic response could have evolved with an adaptive value and allergens could be proxies for other putative noxious agents. The last decades yielded with vast molecular data of allergens. With available bioinformatics tools, we therefore also describe that evolutionary theory could be applied to prevent allergy, estimate cross-reactivity, to design allergen-specific immunotherapy and to assess the risks of novel foods.

Keywords: Allergy; Evolutionary medicine; Hygiene hypothesis; IgE; Parasites; Toxin hypothesis.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Parasite Immunol. 2000 Jul;22(7):319-31 - PubMed
    1. Trends Parasitol. 2012 Jan;28(1):9-15 - PubMed
    1. Q Rev Biol. 1991 Mar;66(1):23-62 - PubMed
    1. Front Immunol. 2017 Jan 09;7:672 - PubMed
    1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Jun 11;93(12):5675-9 - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources