Component-resolved diagnostics in food allergy

Purpose of review: The purose of this paper is to review and discuss recent studies on component-resolved diagnostic in food allergy, involving panels of pure allergen molecules or arrays of peptides derived from allergens sequences, and to summarize the reporting of new food allergens during the past 2 years. Recent findings: Several componet-resolved diagnostic studies in food allergy suggest that the use of panels of allergen molecules may allow refined clinical information to be obtained on the likelihood or severity of an allergic food reaction and regarding diagnostic specificty. Further, in some studies the use of pure allergen molecules has led to a clearly higher sensitivity of the immunoglobulin E immunoassay compared with conventional allergen extracts. Summary: While common diagnostics methods in allergy assess the presence or absence mof allergen-specific sensitization, to date, no in-vitro or in-vivo test exists which exhibits full corellation with clinical food allergy. A miltitude of recently reported findings and observations indicate that molecular analysis of allergen sensitization pattern mat serve to enhance the clinical utility of immunoglobulin E antibody-based allergy diagnostics. Pure natural and recombinant allergyen molecules as well as panels of synthetics peptides hve been used for this purpose.