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Review
. 2020 Aug 14;10(8):1181.
doi: 10.3390/biom10081181.

Histamine Intolerance: The Current State of the Art

Oriol Comas-Basté  1   2   3 , Sònia Sánchez-Pérez  1   2   3 , Maria Teresa Veciana-Nogués  1   2   3 , Mariluz Latorre-Moratalla  1   2   3 , María Del Carmen Vidal-Carou  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

Histamine Intolerance: The Current State of the Art

Oriol Comas-Basté et al. Biomolecules. .

Abstract

Histamine intolerance, also referred to as enteral histaminosis or sensitivity to dietary histamine, is a disorder associated with an impaired ability to metabolize ingested histamine that was described at the beginning of the 21st century. Although interest in histamine intolerance has considerably grown in recent years, more scientific evidence is still required to help define, diagnose and clinically manage this condition. This article will provide an updated review on histamine intolerance, mainly focusing on its etiology and the existing diagnostic and treatment strategies. In this work, a glance on histamine intoxication will also be provided, as well as the analysis of some uncertainties historically associated to histamine intoxication outbreaks that may be better explained by the existence of interindividual susceptibility to ingested histamine.

Keywords: diamine oxidase (DAO); food intolerance; food supplement; histamine; histamine intolerance; histamine intoxication; histaminosis; low-histamine diet.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Synthesis of histamine by decarboxylation of its precursor amino acid.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Histamine metabolism in humans. DAO: diamine oxidase; HNMT: histamine-N-methyltransferase; ALDH: aldehyde dehydrogenase; MAO: monoamine oxidase.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Intestinal degradation of histamine by the DAO enzyme in three different situations: in a healthy individual, with histamine intoxication and with histamine intolerance. Adapted from [13].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Oxidative deamination of histamine by the DAO enzyme.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Count of scientific publications containing the keywords histamine intolerance or histaminosis, according to a search performed through the PubMed search engine at the MEDLINE bibliographic database (search performed in July 2020).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Main symptoms of histamine intolerance and possibly corresponding histamine receptors [10,64].
Figure 7
Figure 7
Summary of the described approaches to the diagnosis of histamine intolerance. SNPs: single-nucleotide polymorphisms.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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