New pharmaceutical approaches for the treatment of food allergies.

In the past, management of food allergies has consisted of the education of patients to avoid the ingestion of the culprit food and to initiate the therapy (e.g. self-injectable epinephrine) in case of accidental ingestion. In recent years, sublingual/oral immunotherapies based on the continuous administration of small amounts of the allergen have been developed. However, the long periods of time needed to obtain significant desensitization and the generation of adverse effects, limit their use. In order to solve these drawbacks, strategies to induce tolerance are being studied, such as the use of either adjuvant immunotherapy in order to facilitate the reversion of the Th2 response towards Th1 or the use of monoclonal antibodies to block the main immunogenic elements.