2011 Volume 25 Issue 1 Pages 36-49
The term "component-resolved diagnostics (CRD)" has been coined to describe the diagnosis of allergic diseases with diagnostic tests based on pure allergen molecules, such as recombinant allergens and purified allergens. CRD introduces new possibilities for diagnosing allergic diseases including food allergy. In food allergy, CRD might be effective in improving diagnosis efficiency and presuming the clinical features of food allergies, such as clinical type, severity and prognosis, and the possibility of cross-reactivity. In research of CRD using plant-derived components, the recombinant allergen molecules with high cross-reactive potential have been used as marker allergens, and more recently, the concept of "marker allergens" has been applied to important and well-characterized components related to factors other than cross-reactivity, such as severity and prognosis, in food allergy. In the terms of assays, while specific IgE assays have been designed predominantly as single allergen tests, protein array technologies allow the simultaneous measurement of IgE antibodies of many specificities using complex arrays comprising large numbers of allergens. The further introduction of CRD in allergological practice provides the potential basis for individualized diagnostics and treatment in the future.
