The diagnosis and management of food allergy in childhood

Abstract

Food allergy has reached epidemic proportions in developed countries over the past few decades for reasons not well understood. With the growing disease burden and the need to improve food allergy diagnosis, better diagnostics tools such as component resolved diagnostics (CRD) have been introduced for clinical use. Still, oral food challenges remain the gold standard tool for establishing food allergy diagnosis. Current food allergy management strategies rely on avoidance of the culprit allergen. Inspired by the success of specific immunotherapy in inhalant allergy, the past decade has been marked by increasing international effort to find curative treatments. The results from several clinical trials, examining success of allergen-specific immunotherapy in food allergy, have recently become available and are discussed within this review article.

Conclusion – The results from these clinical trials promise new curative therapies for food allergy sufferers in the near future. Moreover, several ongoing interventional studies looking into early- life introduction of allergenic foods could provide us with specific answers on future primary prevention strategies.