Factores de riesgo asociados a alergia alimentaria: una revisión de estudios en niños y adolescentes

Abstract

Abstract: Food allergy is an adverse reaction caused by immunological mechanisms that affects most often to 5% of children and 3% - 4% of adults. In the scientific literature have been implicated genetic, socio-demographic, pre and post-natal, nutritional and environmental risk factors reporting variable and inconsistent results. In this context, this article makes a literature review about probable factors associated with the development of food allergy, for which we considered those publications from maximum 10 years ago, which helps to clarify the findings until now. According to this review, factors such as heredity of atopy, atopic diseases, age, gender, maternal age and exposure to cigarette were considered as high association to the development of food allergy because there is a wide and consistent association in several studies. While factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gestational age, type of delivery, birth weight, breastfeeding, age of introduction of solid foods, vitamin D intake in maternal diet, type of formula, contact with animals, day care attendance, number of older brothers and geographical areas have been considered as low association since research shows to be inconsistent or isolated.