Summary supplement to NIAID Allergy Guidelines

As reported in last month's issue of the Allergen Bureau eNews, Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy were published by a NIAID-sponsored Expert Panel in December 2010. A summary supplement to these Guidelines was published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the same time, and is freely available for download.

The Guidelines provide 43 concise clinical recommendations and additional guidance on points of current controversy in patient management. Gaps in the current scientific knowledge to be addressed through future research are also identified in the Guidelines. The summary is a comprehensive, fourteen page synopsis which follows numbered sections of the Guideline document, providing an 'in brief' description of most of the recommendations.

In addition to the introduction, the broad spectrum of topics relating to food allergy is covered in five sections. Topics include the definitions, prevalence, natural history and diagnosis of food allergy, plus the management of anaphylaxis and other acute or non-acute reactions to foods. Useful prevalence data for peanut, tree nuts, seafood, milk and egg allergies in the United States are provided in the Summary document, with a reference to the Guidelines for more detail.

In developing the Guidelines, the NIAID-sponsored Expert Panel have focused on diseases that are defined as food allergy, including both IgE-mediated reactions to food and some non-IgE-mediated reactions to food. However they do not discuss coeliac disease, as clinical guidelines for coeliac disease already exist.

Both the summary document and the full guidelines can be accessed via the NIAID website, and a lay language synopsis of the guidelines is expected to be available soon.

Reference: Boyce et al. 2010. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Vol.126(6 Suppl):S1-58. DOI:10.1016/j.jaci.2010.10.008