Food allergies are serious and, for some, potentially deadly. And yet, despite decades of research into allergies and what causes them, very little is known about why the vast majority of people are able to tolerate foods that can sicken or even kill others.
“We know a lot about what the immune system sees and does if a patient has an allergy, but we know very little about what happens when things go right,” said Elizabeth “Beth” Sattely, an associate professor of chemical engineering in the School of Engineering at Stanford University and senior author of a new study tackling this question in the journal Science Immunology.
Sattely and her co-authors revealed that oral tolerance – an active function of the immune system – involves recognition of specific proteins in common food sources…