A conversation on allergy: recognizing the past and looking to the future

Erik Melén; Bart N Lambrecht; Clare M Lloyd; Marc E Rothenberg; Kenji Kabashima; Fabio Luciani; Jonathan M Coquet; Carole Ober; Martijn C Nawijn; Thomas Platts-Mills; Erika von Mutius

doi:10.1111/imcb.12688

A conversation on allergy: recognizing the past and looking to the future

Immunol Cell Biol. 2023 Nov-Dec;101(10):936-946. doi: 10.1111/imcb.12688. Epub 2023 Sep 9.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Sciences and Education, Karolinska Institutet, Södersjukhuset, Stockholm, Sweden.
² Laboratory of Mucosal Immunology, VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
³ National Heart & Lung Institute, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, UK.
⁴ Division of Allergy and Immunology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
⁵ Department of Dermatology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan.
⁶ UNSW Sydney, School of Medical Sciences, Kirby Institute, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
⁷ Leo Foundation Skin Immunology Research Center, Department of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
⁸ Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁹ University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Pathology & Medical Biology, GRIAC Research Institute, Groningen, The Netherlands.
¹⁰ School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
¹¹ Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Institute of Asthma and Allergy Prevention at Helmholtz Centre Munich, Munich, Germany.

PMID: 37688499
DOI: 10.1111/imcb.12688

Abstract

Allergy is an ever-evolving group of disorders, which includes asthma, atopic dermatitis, rhinitis and food allergies and that currently affects over 1 billion people worldwide. This group of disorders has exploded in incidence since around the start of the 20th century, implying that genetics is not solely responsible for its development but that environmental factors have an important role. Here, Fabio Luciani and Jonathan Coquet, in their role as editors at Immunology & Cell Biology, asked nine prominent researchers in the field of allergy to define the term 'allergy', discuss the role of genetics and the environment, nominate the most important discoveries of the past decade and describe the best strategies to combat allergy at the population level going forward.

Keywords: Allergy; asthma; hypersensitivity; immune response.

MeSH terms

Asthma*
Dermatitis, Atopic*
Food Hypersensitivity*
Humans