Allergenic milk proteins. Friend or foe nutritional proteins?

GUILLERMO HORACIO DOCENA; PAOLA LORENA SMALDINI; RENATA CURCIARELLO; ANGELA MARÍA CANDREVA

Milk Proteins - From Structure to Biological Properties and Health Aspects

Intech

Año: 2016; p. 243 - 263

Allergies are complex inflammatory diseases with anot fully understood etiology. Several factors, including genetic,environmental, age of exposition, diet, etc, are associated with the inductionof these diseases. The incidence of allergies has increased during the lastdecades and constitutes the most common immune-based disease worldwide. Accordingto the Hygiene Hypothesis a lower exposure to pathogens and commensal microbesthat reside in the intestinal lumen is responsible for the rapid rise of theprevalence of atopic and allergic disorders, specifically food allergy. Toovercome this tendency, the immunological mechanisms underlying this pathology shouldbe better understood, which will undoubtedly impact the development of noveltherapies. A large body of evidences demonstrates that immunotherapiesconstitute corrective treatments of the impaired regulation of the immunesystem in allergic patients.Theaim of this chapter is to present an overview about allergic diseases and foodallergies, mechanisms involved, differences with toxic reactions and foodintolerances, a brief description of the main milk allergenic proteins and thenew therapeutic strategies derived from the old immunotherapies to restore oraltolerance, and finally, to describe different pathologies associated with milkallergy.