Contents

#### **Preface XI**


Preface

therapies.

atopic allergic diseases.

Pollen allergy is an important public problem and one of the most common causes of chronic ill health in the western societies. More than 25% of the population suffers from IgE-mediated allergies (including children and adults) which therefore represent a major challenge of our society, particularly because untreated allergy often progresses to severe disabling forms of disease. This allergic disease has increased in

Today allergen-specific immunotherapy is being established as the only allergenspecific and disease-modifying approach toward the treatment for IgE-mediated allergies and has long lasting effects. Up until now, commonly used treatments have been focused on relief of the clinical symptoms to alleviate allergic inflammation rather than underlying immune mechanisms, i.e. antihistamine and topical corticosteroids. In addition, conventional immunotherapy involves administration of natural allergen extracts containing mixture of undefined components with potential to induce a life-threatening anaphylactic response and new IgE-mediated reactivity

At present, there is not universal cure for pollen allergy, and the disease can only be managed by allergens avoidance or treatment of symptoms. However, there is exciting new knowledge as these presented in this book "the cultivar issues", which may help in the improvement of clinical trial, diagnosis and development of potential new

Researchers in the field are working hard to understand the mechanisms of allergy, and the disease-causing allergens are being characterized in great detail down to their molecular structures and cellular and physiological functions. Advances in molecular biology have led to an exponential increase in our understanding of molecular pathways involved in the manifestation of type 1 allergy symptoms, which also has pave the road for a significant advance in the development of a cure or vaccine for

Biochemical and molecular approaches together with computational biology, especially the informatics tools for allergen epitopes identification, structural characterization for designing allergy vaccines, have provided the knowledge to

prevalence during the past decades and a major increase has been predicted.

and/or sensitizations to previously non-exposes allergens.
