Review of food allergy immunotherapy data

Monday, 24 May 2010 09:27

Globally, the development of methods to treat food allergy currently has a strong focus on oral immunotherapy. Allergy researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have reviewed evidence on food oral immunotherapy and believe the preliminary data are encouraging.

However, they caution that many more studies are required to determine such parameters as optimal dose, ideal duration of oral/sublingual immunotherapy, degree of protection, efficacy for different ages, severity and type of food allergy responsive to treatment and need for patient protection during home administration. They conclude that until these questions are answered in rigorous multicenter randomized and placebo-controlled trials, oral immunotherapy remains an experimental approach with not sufficiently well established risk-to-benefit ratio.

Reference: Nowak-Wegrzyn& Fiocchi 2010.Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Vol.10(3) pp. 214-9.