Optimizing Patient Care in Egg Allergy Diagnosis and Treatment

Abstract

Egg allergy occurs frequently in childhood with a reported prevalence of 1.3–1.6%. Providing optimal care to egg-allergic patients requires knowledge of the most up-to-date developments in both diagnosis and management, as well as effective communication skills, which will engage the patient in the shared decision-making process. This review aims to provide up-to-date information on egg allergy and also serve as a concise guide on optimal patient diagnosis and management. The field of food allergy has seen multiple advances in recent years, including use of component resolved diagnostics, early egg introduction into the infant diet as a way of preventing egg allergy, baked egg introduction and oral immunotherapy as a form of active therapy. Faced with a variety of options and treatment paths, it is important to ensure that patients and families taking part in the decision-making process have fully understood the potential outcomes and trade-offs and can undertake a detailed discussion of all options that are available to them. Shared decision-making remains the cornerstone of optimal patient care.

Keywords:

• food allergy
• children
• egg
• components
• prevention
• food challenge
• food allergy action plan
• management
• oral immunotherapy
• desensitization
• shared decision-making

Abbreviations

OIT, oral immunotherapy; PAL, precautionary allergen labelling; QoL, quality of life; RCT, randomized controlled trials.

Disclosure

None directly relevant to this work.

Dr Aikaterini Anagnostou is the principal investigator for Aimmune Therapeutics research peanut oral immunotherapy trials and receives Institutional grant funding, and serves as an advisory board member for DBV Technologies.

Additional information

Funding

There is no funding to report.