Better understanding of severe immunological reactions: Food allergy

Abstract

In the past few decades, the prevalence of food allergies has increased significantly, affecting millions of adults and children worldwide. This increase in the prevalence of food allergies cannot be explained simply by either genetic or environmental factors, but it is obvious that the complex interaction between both factors is essential in pathogenesis. In this chapter, I discuss the immunological mechanism underlying food tolerance conditions, how immune tolerance is broken down, and how the immune reactivity to food is sensitized to lead to food allergies in certain individuals.Understanding themolecularmechanismis crucial for designing better drugs and treatments, because currently there are no approved therapeutics to treat these complicated diseases, excepting corticosteroid and epinephrine to rescue some allergic reactions. I also summarize here the present understanding of the genetic risks detected in patients with allergic reactions. Recent promising results in immunotherapy to treat food allergies are attracting a vast amount of interest in research and drug development. However, to better understand the dysfunction of the immune system in these allergic patients, we need to obtain comprehensive information about interindividual differences, as well as the temporal and spatial changes of the immune responses in each patient through detailed analysis of T cells, B cells, or other immune-related cells. Finally, I show our next-generation sequencing approach that allows us to analyze millions of T-cell receptor (TCR) and B-cell receptor (BCR) sequences to gain insights into the immune responses in patients with food allergies.