Abstract
The gastrointestinal immune system is a major component of the mucosal barrier, which serves as a first line of defense against foreign antigens, whether microbial or dietary. A dynamic, organized and diffuse lymphoid tissue network, which includes Peyer's patches, crypt patches, isolated lymphoid follicles, colonic patches, lamina propria, and epithelium compartments, it normally functions to preserve the appropriate immunological homeostasis between the host and foreign antigens. However, should this homeostasis be disrupted, this same gastrointestinal immune system may respond abnormally to food protein antigens and so trigger allergic responses in the gastrointestinal tract. Though findings of interest in this field are limited by the relatively small number of experimental animal models available, those available animal models can be applied in order to show how they provide insight into the induction and regulation of gastrointestinal allergies and how they may lead to the development of a new mucosal immune therapy for the control of food allergies.
