Multi-omics profiling approach in food allergy

The prevalence of food allergy (FA) among children is increasing, affecting nearly 8% of children, and FA is the most common cause of anaphylaxis and anaphylaxis-related emergency department visits in children.

Importantly, FA is a complex, multi-system, multifactorial disease mediated by food-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) and type 2 immune responses and involving environmental and genetic factors and gene-environment interactions.

Early exposure to external and internal environmental factors largely influences the development of immune responses to allergens.

Genetic factors and gene-environment interactions have established roles in the FA pathophysiology.

To improve diagnosis and identification of FA therapeutic targets, high-throughput omics approaches have emerged and been applied over the past decades to screen for potential FA biomarkers, such as genes, transcripts, proteins, and metabolites.

In this article, we provide an overview of the current status of FA omics studies, namely genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, proteomic, exposomic, and metabolomic.

The current development of multi-omics integration of FA studies is also briefly discussed.

As individual omics technologies only provide limited information on the multi-system biological processes of FA, integration of population-based multi-omics data and clinical data may lead to robust biomarker discovery that could translate into advances in disease management and clinical care and ultimately lead to precision medicine approaches.