Review Article
Food Intolerance versus Food Allergy
Iman Hamed Nasr, Humaid Al Wahshi
Correspondence Address :
Iman Hamed Nasr
Immunology and Allergy Unit
Royal Hospital, Muscat
Oman
Email: drimannasr@gmail.com
Received on: December 01, 2017, Accepted on: December 14, 2017, Published on: December 21, 2017
Citation: Iman Hamed Nasr, Humaid Al Wahshi (2017). Food Intolerance versus Food Allergy
Copyright: 2017 Iman Hamed Nasr, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Adverse reactions related to foods are a common problem reported by up to 20% of the general population. These can be divided into allergic (immunologic) and non allergic (non immunologic) food reactions. The majority of food reactions are non allergic and are mostly related to food intolerances such as lactose intolerance. Other non allergic food reactions include gastroesophageal reflux disease, nonceliac gluten sensitivity, irritable bowel syndrome, metabolic diseases, gastrointestinal infections, gastrointestinal diseases that result from neurological or anatomic disorders and toxin mediated such as scromboid poisoning and fungal toxins. It is important to differentiate between food intolerance and food allergy as food allergy may lead to severe life threating reactions and even death. In this article, we explore the differences between food intolerance and food allergy, their diagnosis and management.
Keywords: Food intolerance, Food allergy, Immunologic reactions, Non immunologic reactions, Epinephrine, Autoinjector