Abstract
Food allergy is increasing in prevalence, affecting up to 10% of
children in developed countries. Food allergy can significantly affect
the quality of life and well-being of patients and their families;
therefore, an accurate diagnosis is of extreme importance. Some food
allergies can spontaneously resolve in 50-60% of cow’s milk and egg
allergic, 20% of peanut allergic and 9% of tree nut allergic children
by school age. For that reason, food allergic status should be monitored
over time to determine when to reintroduce the food back into the
child’s diet. The gold-standard to confirm the diagnosis and the
resolution of food allergy is an oral food challenge; however, this
involves a risk of causing an acute allergic reaction and requires
clinical experience and resources to treat allergic reactions of any
degree of severity. In the clinical setting, biomarkers have been used
and validated to enable an accurate diagnosis when combined with the
clinical history, deferring the oral food challenge, whenever possible.
In this review, we cover the tools available to support the diagnosis of
food allergies and to predict food allergy resolution over time. We
review the latest evidence on different testing modalities and how
effective they are in guiding clinical decision-making in practice. We
also evaluate predictive test cut-offs for the more common food
allergens to try and provide guidance on when challenges might be most
successful in determining oral tolerance in children.