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
. 2021 May;32(4):647-657.
doi: 10.1111/pai.13443. Epub 2021 Jan 21.

Update on food allergy

Rachel L Peters  1   2 , Marta Krawiec  3   4   5 , Jennifer J Koplin  1   2   6 , Alexandra F Santos  3   4   5   7
Affiliations
Review

Update on food allergy

Rachel L Peters et al. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2021 May.

Abstract

Food allergy is a major public health issue with growing prevalence in the urbanized world and significant impact on the lives of allergic patients and their families. Research into the risk factors that have contributed to this increase and their underlying immune mechanisms could lead us to definitive ways for treatment and prevention of food allergy. For the time being, introduction of peanut and other allergenic foods in the diet at the time of weaning seems to be an effective way to prevent the development of food allergy. Improved diagnosis and appropriate management and support of food allergic patients are central to patient care with food immunotherapy and biologics making the transition to clinical practice. With the new available treatments, it is becoming increasingly important to include patients' and family preferences to provide a management plan tailored to their needs.

Keywords: IgE; basophil activation test; biologics; diagnosis; food allergy; immunotherapy; skin prick test.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Alexandra F. Santos reports grants and personal fees from Medical Research Council (MR/M008517/1; MR/T032081/1); grants from Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE), Asthma UK and the NIHR through the Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) award to Guy's and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, during the conduct of the study; grants from Immune Tolerance Network/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, NIH); grants from Asthma UK; personal fees from Thermo Scientific, Nutricia, Infomed, Novartis, Allergy Therapeutics, and Buhlmann; and research support from Buhlmann and Thermo Scientific through a collaboration agreement with King's College London. RLP and JK receive research support from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Proposed use of component‐resolved diagnostics (CRD), basophil and mast cell activation tests (BAT and MAT) in combination with conventional tests, skin prick test (SPT) and specific IgE (sIgE), to reduce the need for oral food challenges (OFC)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Clinical phenotypes of food‐sensitized and food‐allergic children and possible outcomes of food immunotherapy. Although the largest evidence comes from peanut studies, the concepts highlighted here are applicable to other food allergies
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Gupta RS, Warren CM, Smith BM, et al. The public health impact of parent‐reported childhood food allergies in the United States. Pediatrics. 2018;142(6):e20181235. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Le TTK, Nguyen DH, Vu ATL, Ruethers T, Taki AC, Lopata AL. A cross‐sectional, population‐based study on the prevalence of food allergies among children in two different socio‐economic regions of Vietnam. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2019;30(3):348‐355. - PubMed
    1. Tham EH, Leung ASY, Pacharn P, et al. Anaphylaxis ‐ Lessons learnt when East meets West. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2019;30(7):681‐688. - PubMed
    1. Botha M, Basera W, Facey‐Thomas HE, et al. Rural and urban food allergy prevalence from the South African Food Allergy (SAFFA) study. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2019;143(2):662‐668 e662. - PubMed
    1. Prescott S, Allen KJ. Food allergy: riding the second wave of the allergy epidemic. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2011;22(2):155‐160. - PubMed

Publication types