Oral Immunotherapy for Food Allergic Patients

Greetings from the Center for Food Allergy at the Shamir Medical Center (formerly Assaf Harofeh)!  We are proud to update you regarding some of the highlights of 2019.

- As of December, over 250 patients are in active oral immunotherapy treatment (OIT) programs at our center. The majority of our current patients are enrolled in OIT for milk (95 patients) and treenut (82) allergies, with others receiving treatment for peanut (49), sesame (23) and egg (5) allergies. Treatment success remains high with almost 90% of our patients achieving at least partial allergic desensitization

. -Seven articles were published in 2019 by members of our staff on various aspects of food allergy. Research topics included the specific allergens associated with different manifestations of treenut allergy, the safety and efficacy of walnut and sesame OIT programs at our center, and quality of life assessments for patients with food allergy before and after treatment.

-We continue in our efforts to devise effective methods for diagnosing food allergy, and are currently preparing a manuscript demonstrating the combined use of different blood tests to greatly curb the need for oral food challenges in diagnosing sesame allergy.

- In our collaborative project with researchers at Azrieli Medical Faculty at Bar Ilan University, we have demonstrated associations of particular gut-resident bacterial populations with persistent food allergy (that does not spontaneously resolve), along with possible mechanistic roles that microbes might play in promoting or preventing allergy.

The efforts at the Center for Food Allergy reflect our aims to join cutting-edge research with real-world impact that improves the life of allergic patients and their families. We thank you for your continued support, and invite you to follow our progress in 2020. With our best wishes for a happy Festival of Lights, or as we say in Israel, "Hag Urim Sameah!"

Hello from the Center for Allergy at the Yitzhak Shamir (Formerly Assaf Harofeh) Medical Center. We hope you have had a pleasant summer. With the turn of the seasons, it is a good time to update you on our current progress and project direction.

In prior updates, we have discussed the difficulty in accurately diagnosing food allergy. To some extent, this is largely addressed by performing oral food challenges (OFC) with suspected allergenic foods. However OFC can be daunting for many patients to go through, not to mention the time investment required, and the complexity of the procedure. A major focus of our work therefore, has been the investigation of alternative food allergy diagnostic methods. In the last year, we have published several papers about food allergy diagnosis using combinations of various methods. While we found that many patients could be diagnosed accurately without the need for a challenge, there were still patients with negative tests results who were really allergic (false negatives). Therefore OFC have remained necessary to rule out allergy.  

We are currently looking to expand our toolbox of diagnostic methods by building on some that are already in use. Previously, we have examined the reactions of basophil cells in the blood of allergic patients to extracts of potentially allergenic food. We have also started to investigate the presence of antibodies to specific protein allergens in the sera of these patients. Going forward, we are looking to combine aspects of these methods, testing the specific protein allergens, individually or in combination, on the basophils. This work will require synthesizing the specific proteins, and optimizing for their introduction onto live cells Ultimately, the research should allow us to study direct effects of known protein allergens on histamine-producing cells such as basophils, thereby further facilitating fine-tuning of food allergy diagnosis.

Your support will further our progress toward understanding, diagnosing, and ultimately eliminating food allergy. Thank you very much and as we say in Israel  before Rosh Hashana, "Shana tova umetukah. " Have a good and sweet new year.