Allergology International

Allergology International

Volume 65, Issue 4, October 2016, Pages 363-369
Allergology International

Invited review article
Food allergy: Past, present and future

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alit.2016.08.006Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Abstract

Hippocrates is often credited with first recognizing that food could be responsible for adverse symptoms and even death in some individuals, but it was not until the seminal observations by Prausnitz that the investigation of food allergy was viewed on a more scientific basis. In the first half of the 20th century, there were periodic reports in the medical literature describing various food allergic reactions. In the mid- to late- 1970's, the studies of Charles May and colleagues began to penetrate the medical world's skepticism about the relevance of food allergy and how to diagnose it, since standard skin testing was known to correlate poorly with clinical symptoms. With May's introduction of the double-blind placebo-controlled oral food challenge, the study of food allergy became evidence-based and exponential strides have been made over the past four decades in the study of basic immunopathogenic mechanisms and natural history, and the diagnosis and management of food allergies. Today IgE- and non-IgE-mediated food allergic disorders are well characterized and efforts to treat these allergies by various immunotherapeutic strategies are well under way.

Keywords

Allergenic epitopes
Diagnosis
Epidemiology
Food allergy
Immunothearpy

Abbreviations

IgE
immunoglobulin E
DBPCFC
double-blind placebo-controlled food challenge
OIT
oral immunotherapy
RAST
radioallergosorbent test
Ara h 2
Arachis hypogaea component protein #2
Cor a 9 and 14
Corylus avellana component proteins #9 and #14
TLR
toll-like receptor
OFC
oral food challenge

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Peer review under responsibility of Japanese Society of Allergology.