food allergies tagged posts

Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School have identified how the first domino falls after a person encounters an allergen, such as peanuts, shellfish, pollen or dustmites. Their discovery, published in the April issue of Nature Immunology, could herald the development of drugs to prevent these severe reactions.

It is well established that when mast cells, a type of immune cell, mistake a harmless substance, such as peanuts or dust mites, as a threat, they release an immediate first wave of bioactive chemicals against the perceived threat...

A new study identifies the species of bacteria in the human infant gut that protect against food allergies, finding changes associated with the development of food allergies and an altered immune response.

Every three minutes, a food-related allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room in the U.S. Currently, the only way to prevent a reaction is for people with food allergies to completely avoid the food to which they are allergic. Researchers are actively seeking new treatments to prevent or reverse food allergies in patients...

Might it be possible to ‘turn off’ a food allergy? Credit: © bit24 / Fotolia

A team led by A/Prof Ray Steptoe at UQ Diamantina Institute has been able to ‘turn-off’ the immune response which causes allergic reaction in animals. “When someone has an allergy or asthma flare-up, the symptoms they experience results from immune cells reacting to protein in the allergen,” Professor Steptoe said. “The challenge in asthma and allergies is that these immune cells, known as T-cells, develop a form of immune ‘memory’ and become very resistant to treatments.

“We have now been able ‘wipe’ the memory of these T-cells in animals with gene therapy, de-sensitising the immune system so that it tolerates the protein...

Regulatory DC immunotherapy can be effective for food allergies and suggest that induction of Foxp3− regulatory T cells might be a useful strategy for tolerance induction in this context.

A new immunotherapy technique has been developed that nearly eliminates the allergic response to peanut and egg white proteins in food-allergic mice, reducing the anaphylactic response by up to 90% with only one treatment. The findings open the door to test this new allergy treatment in “humanized mice” – mice with non-existent immune systems implanted with cells from a human immune system, eg, from a peanut-allergic person. With Health Canada approval, the first human trial could begin in about one year, Gordon said.

“If we can reliably ‘cure’ food allergies, or related conditions such as asthma or aut...