Food allergy has reached epidemic proportions and has become a significant source of healthcare burden. Oral food challenge, the gold standard for food allergy assessment, often is not performed because it places the patient at risk of developing anaphylaxis. However, conventional alternative food allergy tests lack a sufficient predictive value. Therefore, there is a critical need for better diagnostic tests that are both accurate and safe. Microfluidic methods have the potential of helping one to address such needs and to personalize the diagnostics. This article first reviews conventional diagnostic approaches used in food allergy. Second, it reviews recent efforts to develop novel biomarkers and in vitro diagnostics. Third, it summarizes the microfluidic methods developed thus far for food allergy diagnosis. The article concludes with a discussion of future opportunities for using microfluidic methods for achieving precision diagnostics in food allergy, including multiplexing the detection of multiple biomarkers, sampling of tissue-resident cytokines and immune cells, and multi-organ-on-a-chip technology.

中文翻译：

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用于食物过敏精确诊断的微流体方法。


食物过敏已达到流行病的程度，并已成为医疗负担的重要来源。口服食物挑战是食物过敏评估的黄金标准，但通常不会进行，因为它使患者面临发生过敏反应的风险。然而，传统的替代食物过敏测试缺乏足够的预测价值。因此，迫切需要更好、准确且安全的诊断测试。微流体方法有可能帮助人们满足此类需求并实现个性化诊断。本文首先回顾了食物过敏中使用的传统诊断方法。其次，它回顾了最近开发新型生物标志物和体外诊断的努力。第三，总结了迄今为止开发的用于食物过敏诊断的微流体方法。本文最后讨论了使用微流体方法实现食物过敏精确诊断的未来机会，包括多种生物标志物的多重检测、组织驻留细胞因子和免疫细胞的采样以及多器官芯片技术。