Abstract
Detection of food allergen-specific IgE antibodies indicates the diagnosis of food allergy with high sensitivity. On the other hands, false positive detection, where specific IgE antibody is positive in the sera from non-symptomatic patient, is common. For that reason, usage of specific IgE testing in the clinic is limited to estimate the probability of true diagnosis at the given IgE titers (positive predictive value). But if you compare the IgE titers to the related food allergens and consider their cross-reactivity, you may approach to the true diagnosis more easily without oral food challenge. Development of allergen component-specific IgE testing (component-resolved diagnositics) is currently progressed to improve the sensitivity and specificity of the specific IgE testing.
