Alergie pokarmowe – w poszukiwaniu skutecznego leczenia – przegląd piśmiennictwa

Introduction:
Food allergy is a severe, potentially life-threatening condition. Its prevalence has increased dramatically in recent years. Complete avoidance of triggered food and usage of rescue medication in case of accidental ingestion is the current standard procedure. However, food allergy immunotherapy, especially oral immunotherapy (OIT) is now recognized as a new active alternative treatment in patients with IgE-mediated food allergy. Introducing this therapy into clinical practice has been a very significant advancement. Many studies show that OIT can lead to protective levels of desensitization in patients with food allergy. Hence, significant questions concerning the treatment remain.

Aim:
This literature review aims to provide an overview of continuously developing therapies in food allergy treatment.

Material and methods:
The review was designed to assess the data on food allergen immunotherapy (FA-AIT), especially oral immunotherapy (OIT). We searched the following sources: National Library of Medicine PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct and Cochrane databases with keywords: food allergy, OIT, immunotherapy, efficacy, guidelines, and Palforzia.

Results:
We found 7938 articles. We limited the search to data published in the last 5 years to obtain the latest information. Only one article used to prepare this literature review was published 9 years ago. We excluded duplicates and articles out of topic. Then, we chose meta-analyses, reviews, randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, multicenter studies and guidelines with free full text. We also used Palforzia product characteristics to prepare this article.

Conclusions:
Treatment of food allergies is changing. Active treatment is necessary to reduce the burden of food allergies. The efficacy of OIT in desensitization has been confirmed. The transition of oral immunotherapy in peanut allergy to clinical practice has been a significant advancement. However, in some patients, the disadvantages of therapy including mainly mild allergy reactions, long treatment, and high costs of the therapy can overweigh the advantages. When proposing food allergy immunotherapy, a shared decision process should be implemented. Many issues of food allergy immunotherapy still need to be clarified in coming years to optimize the role of the therapy for food allergy.