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If you know anyone with a life-threatening food allergy (or have one yourself), you know how scary it can be to worry about accidentally being exposed to the food and having a bad reaction. People with food allergies often live in fear of this possibility and have to be vigilant about possible exposures, which can really affect their quality of life. Research is being done on drugs that could reduce the severity of food allergies. A bit like an umbrella, these drugs would block food allergens from triggering a reaction.

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Food allergies occur when the immune system mistakes a harmless food as a dangerous threat and makes IgE antibodies to attack it. IgE antibodies are so sensitive, that only milligrams of an allergen can be enough to trigger a reaction. Some studies show that anti-IgE drugs, which block these IgE antibodies, might protect patients with food allergy by raising the threshold needed to trigger a reaction. Essentially, patients on these drugs would have to eat much larger amounts of a food allergen to experience a reaction, and would no longer have to live in fear of accidental exposures. While the studies are promising, they aren’t FDA approved yet for this purpose.

Published in July 2023 Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anai.2023.02.019