Novel treatments for food allergy

Food allergy is a major cause of life-threatening hypersensitivity reactions. Currently, the strict avoidance of the allergenic food and ready access to self-injectable adrenaline is the standard of care for food allergy. Based on extensive characterisation of food allergens and a better understanding of the immunological mechanisms underlying allergic disease, promising therapeutic modalities for the treatment and eventual prevention of food allergy are being developed. Novel immunotherapeutic strategies include peptide immunotherapy, traditional Chinese medicine, mutated or homologous protein immunotherapy, DNA immunisation and immunisation with immunostimulatory sequences, which all strive to elicit a decreased T helper cell type 2-like response or tolerance by the immune system in response to a specific food allergen. Other approaches such as the anti-IgE therapy or the Fcgamma-Fcepsilon fusion protein aim at preventing the release of mediators by mast cells. It is the combination of these different approaches that would probably offer the best treatment option for food-allergic patients in a not too distant future.