food hypersensitivity

The significance of allergen-specific IgE as marker for severity of atopic dermatitis is controversial. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of IgE-mediated sensitisation to food and environmental allergens in 132 children and 67 adults with atopic dermatitis, and its correlation to severity of atopic dermatitis (SCORAD). Total IgE was elevated (> 100 kU/l) in 79.7% of adults and 46.8% of children. Sensitisation frequencies to allergens, particularly microbial allergens, were up to 10-fold higher in adults compared to children. Severity of atopic dermatitis correlated with elevated total IgE in adults (r = 0.549, p < 0.001) and children (r = 0.344, p = 0.005) and with Malassezia spp.-specific IgE in adults (r = 0.429, p = 0.007). Total IgE is a marker for severe atopic dermatitis in both age groups. Malassezia spp.-specific IgE is an important allergen-specific marker for severity of atopic dermatitis in adults.

An overview is presented of the activities of Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in the area of food allergens. Since the 1990s, changes were made in the Food and Drug Regulations in order to better protect allergic consumers by imposing labeling requirements to clearly identify sources of priority food allergens in prepackaged foods. Policies of application as well as risk management strategies are discussed with some statistics on allergen-related food recalls in Canada for the years 1997--2001. Health Canada's allergen method development program is a pioneering research initiative that was developed in the early 1990s in support of the changing Canadian regulatory environment. The objectives and some of the accomplishments of this program are presented. The development of the Canadian Compendium of Allergen Methodologies under a Web-based application to compile data on evaluated allergen detection methods will provide further support to compliance ac...

Food allergies are increasingly prevalent in the pediatric population. Balancing allergen avoidance with the promotion of healthy eating behaviors can be challenging for families. To characterize mealtime behaviors among parents of young children with food allergy. Seventy-four parents of young children with food allergies (≤7 years of age) completed measures of mealtime behavior, perceptions of food allergy risk and severity, pediatric parenting stress, and food allergy-related quality of life. Mealtime behavior reports were compared with published data regarding typically developing children, young children with type 1 diabetes, and children with diagnosed feeding disorders (with or without related medical factors). Parents of young children with food allergies reported frequent mealtime concerns. Specifically, they reported significantly more mealtime behavioral concerns than typically developing peers, comparable mealtime behavioral concerns to young children with type 1 diabete...

This document provides supplemental guidance on specifications for the development and implementation of studies to validate the performance characteristics of quantitative ELISA methods for the determination of food allergens. It is intended as a companion document to other existing publications ...

For some decades now, bacteria known as probiotics have been added to various foods because of their beneficial effects for human health. The mechanism of action of probiotics is related to their ability to compete with pathogenic microorganisms for adhesion sites, to antagonize these pathogens or to modulate the host's immune response. The potential application of probiotics includes prevention and treatment of various health conditions and diseases such as gastrointestinal infections, inflammatory bowel disease, lactose intolerance, allergies, urogenital infections, cystic fibrosis, various cancers, reduction of antibiotic side effects, in oral health such as prevention of dental caries, periodontal diseases and oral malodour and many other effects which are under investigation. The results of many of these clinical investigations suggests that probiotics may be useful in preventing and treating various health conditions and diseases. However, many of these clinical studies re...

As part of a European Union-funded project (FP7) developing 'Integrated approaches to food allergen and allergy management', a database was constructed based on publicly available information on food allergen recalls in Europe, North America, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Over 2000 entries were made into the database. The database covers a 4-year period from 2011 to 2014 and each entry is categorised into food type (two different classifications), identified allergen and cause where indicated by the authorities. Across different authorities, by far the biggest incidence of undeclared allergens occurred in the food categories of prepared dishes and snacks (range = 12-53%), and cereals and bakery products (range = 14-25% of all recalls and/or alerts). The biggest incidence of undeclared allergens, according to the information from most authorities, occurred for milk and milk products (16-31% of all products with recall or alert), followed by cereals containing gluten (9-19%), soy (5-45%), and egg and egg products (5-17%). Although 42-90% of the products with recalls/alerts were explained as being 'Not indicated on the label', this is a generic explanation of cause and does not provide much insight into the causes of the recall/alerts. However, 0-17% of products with recalls/alerts could be coded as caused by the unintended presence of an allergen as the probable result of cross-contact in production. Construction of the database of allergen recalls has provided some important lessons and recommendations to the authorities are made in this paper in terms of the harmonisation of the reporting of allergen recalls into a more standardised format.

The fruits of Rosaceae species may frequently induce allergic reactions in both adults and children, especially in the Mediterranean area. In peach, true allergens and cross-reactive proteins may cause hypersensitive reactions involving a wide diversity of symptoms. Three known classes of allergenic proteins, namely, Pru p 1, Pru p 3, and Pru p 4, have been reported to be mostly involved, but an exhaustive survey of the proteins determining the overall allergenic potential, their biological functions, and the factors affecting the expression of the related genes is still missing. In the present study, the expression profiles of some selected genes encoding peach allergen isoforms were studied during fruit growth and development and upon different fruit load and light radiation regimens. The results indicate that the majority of allergen-encoding genes are expressed at their maximum during the ripening stage, therefore representing a potential risk for peach consumers. Nevertheless, enhancing the light radiation and decreasing the fruit load achieved a reduction of the transcription rate of most genes and a possible decrease of the overall allergenic potential at harvest. According to these data, new growing practices could be set up to obtain hypoallergenic peach fruits and eventually combined with the cultivation of hypoallergenic genotypes to obtain a significant reduction of the allergenic potential.

BACKGROUND Food intolerance mediated by food specific IgG antibodies has been implicated in a variety of disorders. OBJECTIVES To assess the prevalence of food specific IgG antibodies among patients clinically presenting with allergic symptoms lacking laboratory evidence of allergy. DESIGN Descriptive retrospective cross-sectional study. SETTING King Khalid University Hospital, Riyadh between 2010–2015. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients were screened for food specific IgG antibodies. All symptomatic patients lacking laboratory evidence of allergy who underwent food specific IgG testing during the study duration were included. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S) Levels of IgG antibodies in patients with unidentified allergic symptoms. RESULTS We selected 71 patients with allergic symptoms lacking laboratory evidence of allergy. There were 49 female and 22 male patients mean age 38.8 (16.0) years. The majority (85.7%) had urticaria. The most frequently occurring food specific IgG antibodies were agai...

A large subset of the population is afflicted with a wide range of food-related inflammatory conditions, with at least 100 million people affected worldwide. The C3d/immunoglobulin G (IgG) test measures both the innate and adaptive responses of the immune system. The study intended to validate the C3d/IgG test for food sensitivity for its ability to manage the symptoms of patients with intestinal and extraintestinal symptoms. The research team designed a retrospective study based on a cohort of patients treated at a medical center. The patients were seen at Progressive Medical Center of Atlanta, an integrative medicine clinic, and patients' samples were analyzed at Dunwoody Laboratory. The study included 30 individuals, 9 males and 21 females, ranging in age from 7-71 y who presented with symptoms associated with food sensitivity. The study reviewed the treatment and results of patients who were placed on an exclusion dietary regimen for treatment of possible food sensitivity. F...

Various in vitro tests assess different aspects of the underlying immune mechanism of IgE-mediated food allergy. Some can be used for diagnostic purposes; specific IgE to allergen extracts is widely available; specific IgE to allergen components is used in most specialist centers, and the basophil activation test is becoming increasingly used clinically. IgE to allergen peptides, T-cell assays, allergen-specific/total IgE ratios, and allergen-specific IgG4/IgE ratios are currently reserved for research. Different factors can modulate the likelihood of IgE-mediated food allergy of a given allergy test result, namely, the patients' age, ethnicity, previous allergic reaction to the identified food, concomitant atopic conditions, and geographical location, and need to be taken into account when interpreting the allergy test results in the clinic. The importance of the specific food, the clinical resources available, and patient preferences are additional aspects that need to be cons...

In the last years proteomic science has started to provide an important contribution to the disclosure of basic aspects of food-related diseases. Among these, the identification of proteins involved in food allergy and their mechanism of activation of toxicity. Elucidation of these key issues requires the integration of clinical, immunological, genomic and proteomic approaches. These combined research efforts are aimed to obtain structural and functional information to assist the development of novel, more reliable and powerful diagnostic protocols alternative to the currently available procedures, mainly based on food challenge tests. Another crucial aspect related to food allergy is the need for methods to detect trace amounts of allergenic proteins in foods. Mass spectrometry is the only non-immunological method for high-specificity and high-sensitivity detection of allergens in foods. Nowadays, once provided the appropriate sample handling and the correct operative conditions, qualitative and quantitative determination of allergens in foods and ingredients can be efficiently obtained by MALDI-TOF-MS and LC-MS/MS methods, with limits of detection and quantification in the low-ppb range. The availability of accurate and fast alternatives to immunological ELISA tests may also enable the development of novel therapeutic strategies and food processing technologies to aid patients with food allergy or intolerance, and to support allergen labelling and certification processes, all issues where the role of proteomic science is emerging.

The exact prevalence of food allergy in the general population is unknown, but almost 12% of pediatric population refers a suspicion of food allergy. IgE mediated reactions to food are actually the best-characterized types of allergy, and they might be particularly harmful especially in children. According to the “hygiene hypothesis” low or no exposure to exogenous antigens in early life may increase the risk of allergic diseases by both delaying the development of the immune tolerance and limiting the Th2/Th1 switch. The critical role of intestinal microbiota in the development of immune tolerance improved recently the interest on probiotics, prebiotics, antioxidants, polyunsaturated fatty acid, folate and vitamins, which seem to have positive effects on the immune functions. Probiotics consist in bacteria or yeast, able to re-colonize and restore microflora symbiosis in intestinal tract. One of the most important characteristics of probiotics is their safety for human health. Than...

The increasing use of soybean (Glycine max) products in processed foods poses a potential threat to soybean-sensitive food-allergic individuals. In vitro assays on soybean seed proteins with sera from soybean-sensitive individuals have immunoglobulin E reactivity to abundant storage proteins and a few less-abundant seed proteins. One of these low abundance proteins, Gly m Bd 30 K, also referred to as P34, is in fact a major (i.e. immunodominant) soybean allergen. Although a member of the papain protease superfamily, Gly m Bd 30 K has a glycine in the conserved catalytic cysteine position found in all other cysteine proteases. Transgene-induced gene silencing was used to prevent the accumulation of Gly m Bd 30 K protein in soybean seeds. The Gly m Bd 30 K-silenced plants and their seeds lacked any compositional, developmental, structural, or ultrastructural phenotypic differences when compared with control plants. Proteomic analysis of extracts from transgenic seed detected the suppr...

Shiitake (Lentinus edodes) is the second most consumed mushroom in the world. It has long been known in Asian medicine for its anticarcinogenic, antihypertensive and serum cholesterol level reduction properties. Nevertheless, the consumption of raw or not well-cooked mushrooms may cause skin eruptions which usually occur 24 to 48 hours after ingestion and are characterized by linearly arranged pruritic erythematous papules and plaques. We present a 36-year-old patient that developed typical symptoms 24 hours after consumption of shiitake mushrooms and summarize therapeutic options and particularities of this disease.

The avoidance of food(s) is the main therapeutic approach to food allergy. Nevertheless, orally- or sublingually-administered food allergens have gained attention and a number of food-allergic children can tolerate gradually increasing amounts of cow's milk and hen's egg. Our purpose is to show that oral desensitisation with food is an allergen-specific therapeutic approach and for this, we describe 4 illustrative children with IgE-mediated food allergy. The first was allergic to cow's milk and hen's egg, the second to cow's milk, hen's egg and fish. Both underwent oral desensitisation to both cow's milk and hen's egg. The third child was allergic to cow's milk, hen's egg and fish and underwent oral desensitisation with cow's milk. The last child was allergic to raw but not to cooked/boiled hen's egg and underwent the oral desensitisation with hen's egg. The first 2 children reached the clinic...

Increased total and specific serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels are common characteristics of atopic diseases and their basal production is proposed to be under strong genetic control. Interleukin 13 (IL13) variants have been consistently associated with total serum IgE ...

Atopy is defined as the genetic propensity to develop immunoglobulin E antibodies in response to exposure to allergens and assessed by skin prick test (SPT) responses to common allergens, which may contribute to the development of the clinical disorders (phenotype). Although it is generally agreed that atopy is an important risk factor for allergic diseases such as asthma, rhinitis, and eczema, the extent to which atopy accounts for these diseases is controversial. One hundred forty one children (up to 12 years) were skin prick tested to evaluate 16 foods common to the Malaysian diet and 4 common aeroallergens. Eighty-five percent of patients had positive SPT reactivity. The most commonly implicated aeroallergen and food allergen was house dust mite (HDM) and Prawn. Seventy percent had positive SPT reactivity results to HDM and 24.8% to prawns. Fifty five percent were positive to more than one allergen and 17.7% positive to single aeroallergen. The prevalence of atopy in children wi...

Autism and allied autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) present myriad behavioral, clinical, and biochemical abnormalities. Parental participation, advanced testing protocols, and eclectic treatment strategies have driven progress toward cure. Behavioral modification and structured education are beneficial but insufficient. Dietary restrictions, including removal of milk and other casein dairy products, wheat and other gluten sources, sugar, chocolate, preservatives, and food coloring are beneficial and prerequisite to benefit from other interventions. Individualized IgG or IgE testing can identify other troublesome foods but not non-immune mediated food sensitivities. Gastrointestinal improvement rests on controlling Candida and other parasites, and using probiotic bacteria and nutrients to correct dysbiosis and decrease gut permeability. Detoxification of mercury and other heavy metals by DMSA/DMPS chelation can have marked benefit. Documented sulfoxidation-sulfation inadequacies call...

Food allergy is a common disorder especially in the first years of life. Strict avoidance of the responsible food is the most effective therapeutic measure so far. But this continuous vigilance could be stressful for the patient and family and decreases their quality of life (QOL). This survey was designed to evaluate the impact of IgE-mediated food allergy on parental QOL in Iranian patients and to develop a valid Persian version of "Food Allergy Quality Of Life- Parental Burden (FAQL-PB) questionnaire". 90 patients (28 females, 62 males) and their parents who were referred to the clinic of Allergy in Children's Medical Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran were enrolled. The questionnaire was translated with scientific method and its reliability was approved in a pilot study (ICC=0.75, cronbach-α=0.90). Among all patients the most common allergens were wheat (60%) and cow's milk (42%). The patient's age (p=0.02), parent's gender (p=0...