Review suggests that the immunoregulatory and anti‐inflammatory properties of allergenic foods can provoke oral tolerance if introduced early to infants’ diets.

For years, the advice was to postpone introducing allergenic foods, in order to prevent food allergies. However, food allergies have escalated rather than declined and our review of the latest epidemiological, immunological and nutritional research suggests that early weaning practices may be beneficial. The most allergenic foods, such as fish, eggs and peanuts, have proved […]

Identifying Epithelial Endocytotic Mechanisms of the Peanut Allergens Ara h 1 and Ara h 2.

BACKGROUND: Peanuts are still one of the highest contributors to anaphylactic deaths after ingestion of a food allergen. At the molecular level, interactions between peanut allergens and the intestinal epithelium are largely unexplored. Previous findings by our research group demonstrated that the major peanut allergens, i.e., Ara h 1, Ara h 2, Ara h 3, […]

Conjunctival provocation test in diagnosis of peanut allergy in children.

BACKGROUND: Peanut allergy frequently cause severe allergic reactions. Diagnosis include detection of IgE to peanuts in serum or by skin prick tests. While children may have allergic sensitisation without having clinical peanut allergy, oral peanut challenge is often required for accurate diagnosis. The conjunctival provocation test is used for diagnosis and evaluation of treatment effect […]

Low percentage of clinically relevant pistachio nut and mango co-sensitisation in cashew nut sensitised children.

BACKGROUND: Cashew nut, pistachio nut and mango belong to the Anacardiaceae family and are botanically related. Therefore, cashew nut sensitised children are frequently advised to eliminate cashew nuts and pistachio nuts from their diet. The 'Improvement of Diagnostic mEthods for ALlergy assessment (IDEAL trial number NTR3572) study showed that cashew nut sensitised children were co-sensitised […]

Early introduction of peanuts.

Peanut allergy is the most common food allergy and the leading cause of anaphylaxis and death due to food allergy. Despite previous guidelines created by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2003, peanut allergy has continued to significantly increase over the past decade. Therefore, further research has been done to help clinicians provide more evidence-based […]

Detection of Food Allergens by Taqman Real-Time PCR Methodology.

Real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) has shown to be a very effective technology for the detection of food allergens. The protocol described herein consists on a real-time PCR assay targeting the plant ITS (Internal Transcribed Spacer) region, using species-specific primers and hydrolysis probes (Taqman) dual labeled with a reporter fluorophore at the 5' end (6-carboxyfluorescein, […]

Validation of Recipes for Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Challenges With Milk, Egg White, and Hazelnut.

BACKGROUND: The double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenge (DBPCFC) is considered the definitive diagnostic test for food allergy. Nevertheless, validated recipes for masking the foods are scarce, have not been standardized, and differ between centers. Sensory evaluation techniques such as the triangle test are necessary to validate the recipes used for DBPCFC. METHODS: We developed 3 recipes […]

Detection of Food Allergens by Phage-Displayed Produced Antibodies.

Phage display is a powerful tool to produce recombinant antibodies against a given antigen without animal immunization. This technology employs libraries of recombinant bacteriophages that display billions of different functional antibody fragments on their surface. They are selected by panning in vitro against the target antigen in search for specific binders. In this chapter, we […]