Oral Immunotherapy for Food Allergic Patients

Shalom from the Center for  Allergy at the Shamir Medical Center! It is my pleasure to provide you with an update on some of the developments over the last few months, as we continue our work on improving the treatment and management of food allergies.

Let's start where we left off. The last update was focused on our recent publication concerning diagnosis of cashew and pistachio allergies. Towards the end of the update, I noted our interest in similarly proposing diagnostic methods for hazelnut allergy.  As I have mentioned in previous updates, accurate and specific diagnosis of treenut allergies is complicated, due in part to the significant similarities between allergens of different treenuts. While these similarities often lead to dual allergies, this isn't always the case, since many patients can be allergic to a particular nut (for example, cashew) without being allergic to a closely related nut (pistachio)  We have found that the complication is even more pronounced for hazelnut allergy diagnosis. While some of the hazelnut allergens overlap considerably with other treenuts, others are quite distinct.
Given the above, I am pleased to report that we have made notable progress on the hazelnut allergy puzzle over the last several months. We have gathered data on over 75 hazelnut allergic patients who were treated at our center. This effort itself took a number of years, since true hazelnut allergy has lower incidence than do other treenut allergies. The patients, along with over 50 hazelnut nonallergic patients donated blood, allowing us to assess their cell and antibody responses to hazelnut allergens. Additionally, many of these hazelnut allergic patients underwent our oral immunotherapy (OIT) treatment  for hazelnut or for other treenuts, and donated blood after treatment as well. We are now compiling the data from these patients, and anticipate publication of two studies, one about hazelnut allergy diagnosis and one about the effect of OIT treatment on hazelnut allergy. Stay tuned here for an update in the near future, for more details.

In other food allergy-related matters over the past several months, there have been a number of items concerning food allergy that have garnered attention in the general news media. Unfortunately, there have been a number of cases in which food allergic individuals suffered anaphylactic reactions following accidental consumption of an allergenic food. There are also occasional updates in recommendations related to allergy that get reported in the general media. As our center is highly regarded for its allergy diagnosis and treatment programs, we are privileged to be able to provide outreach, with the goal of improved public awareness and understanding about food allergy. Attached below is a link to a recent radio interview (in Hebrew) about food allergy, with the director of our center, Professor Elizur.

Finally, with the arrival of the holiday season in Israel after a particularly challenging year, I would like to take the opportunity to wish our supporters the best in the year ahead. Shana Tova!

Links:

• Radio interview with Professor Elizur about food allergy