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Evidence has suggested that elimination diets based on food‐specific IgG measurement can lead to improvements in chronic ill health symptoms. This paper aims to review the evidence from studies on food‐specific IgG measurement and dietary change.

A literature review of studies on the putative role for food‐specific IgG‐based elimination diets was undertaken.

The use of fully standardised clinically evaluated food‐specific IgG tests as a basis for elimination diet could lead to a considerable improvement in many patients' quality of life.

This unique review captures evidence for a viable alternative to the time consuming and expensive elimination diet/food challenge approach.

To provide evidence that elimination diet based on food‐specific IgG test results is an effective, reliable and valid aid to the management of chronic medical conditions.

A postal survey, commissioned by Allergy UK, was carried out with 5,286 subjects reporting a wide range of chronic medical conditions, who had taken a food‐specific IgG enzyme‐linked immunosorbant assay blood test. Questionnaires, issued three months after the results, were analysed to investigate the effect of eliminating the foods identified by the test. To check for response bias, a separate group of patients who had not responded were interviewed by telephone. The analysis and reporting of the data was carried out at the University of York.Findings – Of patients who rigorously followed the diet 75.8 per cent had a noticeable improvement in their condition. Of patients who benefited from following the recommendations 68.2 per cent felt the benefit within three weeks. Those who reported more than one condition were more likely to report noticeable improvement. 81.5 per cent of those that dieted rigorously and reported three or more co‐morbidities showed noticeable improvement in their condition. For those who dieted rigorously and reported high benefit, 92.3 per cent noticed a return of symptoms on reintroduction of the offending foods.

These data provide evidence for the use of elimination diet based on food‐specific IgG blood test results as an aid to management of the symptoms of a range of chronic medical conditions.

Functional disorders caused by food intolerance (FI) are prevalent, thus it is important to analyze the FI of healthy people to common foods so as to guide the people for eating the healthy foods. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In total, 88,436 healthy persons including 60,902 males and 27,534 females at the age ranging from 20 to 70 years old were subjected a normal physical examination. In total, 14 kinds of food-specific IgG antibodies were detected by enzyme-linked immunesorbent assay.

The total positive rate of 14 FIs was as high as 64.16 percent. Five kinds of foods (egg, crab, cod, shrimp and milk) accounted for 84.51 percent of the total positive rate. In more than one kind of FIs, egg took the largest proportion than the others and the proportion was 58.54 percent. The second was crab with a positive rate of 56.19 percent. The antibody positive rate of any food in one kind of FIs was significantly lower than that in more than one kind of FIs (χ²=629.35, p<0.001). Also, younger age subjects displayed the higher positive rate than the older age groups. In addition, there was no significant difference on FI between male and female subjects.

The results would not only prompt us to pay more attention to FI in daily life, but provide theoretical foundation for the early prevention, diagnosis and treatment of related clinical diseases as well as guiding people healthy meals.

This paper aims to report on the development of a novel electrochemical amperometric immunosensor to diagnose early hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by detecting the Midkine (MDK) biomarker.

Anti-Midkine antibodies were immobilized covalently through carbodiimides chemistry on carbon screen-printed electrodes modified with carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The development process was characterized using cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedimetric spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Differential pulse voltammetry was used to investigate the immunosensor performance in detecting MDK antigen within the concentration range of 1 pg/ml to 100 ng/ml.

MDK immunosensor exhibited high sensitivity and linearity with a detection limit of 0.8 pg/ml and a correlation coefficient of 0.99. The biosensor also demonstrated high selectivity, stability and reproducibility.

The developed MDK immunosensor could be a promising tool to diagnose HCC and reduce the number of related deaths.

There are several infectious agents in the environment that can cause persistent infections in the host. They usually cause their symptoms shortly after first infection and later persist as silent viruses and bacteria within the body. However, these chronic infections may play an important role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and Tourette's syndrome (TS). We investigated the distribution of different neurotrophic infectious agents in TS, schizophrenia and controls. A total of 93 individuals were included (schizophrenic patients, Tourette patients and controls). We evaluated antibodies against cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes-simplex virus (HSV), Epstein-Barr virus, Toxoplasma, Mycoplasma and Chlamydia trachomatis/pneumoniae. By comparing schizophrenia and TS, we found a higher prevalence of HSV (P=0.017) and CMV (P=0.017) antibodies in schizophrenic patients. Considering the relationship between schizophrenia, TS and healthy controls, we showed that there are associations for Chlamydia trachomatis (P=0.007), HSV (P=0.027) and CMV (P=0.029). When all measured viruses, bacteria and protozoa were combined, schizophrenic patients had a higher rate of antibodies to infectious agents than TS patients (P=0.049). Tourette and schizophrenic patients show a different vulnerability to infectious agents. Schizophrenic patients were found to have a higher susceptibility to viral infections than individuals with TS. This finding might point to a modification in special immune parameters in these diseases.

The nutritional and anthropometric status can be essential in determining their immune response to vaccines. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the association between diet quality and anthropometric indices with the side effects of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin G titer among Kurdish adults.

This cross-sectional survey-based study was conducted between December 2021 and February 2022. This paper included data on 115 adults, 20–89 years old, from the Kurdistan region. Dietary information was collected using a short food frequency questionnaire, and diet quality was assessed using a plant-based healthy diet score. A blood test was performed to measure the SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobin G (IgG) titer after the vaccination's first and second doses.

Overweight and obese subjects reported more local pain, myalgia, headache, local bruising and local reactions after receiving the first dose of the vaccine (p = 0.04). People on a less healthy diet reported more local pain, myalgia and headache (p = 0.04) and more local bruising and reactions (p = 0.01) after receiving the second dose of the vaccine. On the other hand, the authors observed that those with healthy dietary habits had more IgG titer after the first and second doses of vaccination than those with less healthy dietary habits (p = 0.001).

The results showed that participants with a healthy diet and normal weight status had fewer side effects of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine than obese people and those with a less healthy diet.

This study aims to estimate the overall SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and evaluate the accuracy of an antibody rapid test compared to a reference serological assay during a COVID-19 outbreak in a prison complex housing over 13,000 prisoners in Brasília.

The authors obtained a randomized, stratified representative sample of each prison unit and conducted a repeated serosurvey among prisoners between June and July 2020, using a lateral-flow immunochromatographic assay (LFIA). Samples were also retested using a chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLIA) to compare SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and 21-days incidence, as well as to estimate the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) and determine the diagnostic accuracy of the LFIA test.

This study identified 485 eligible individuals and enrolled 460 participants. Baseline and 21-days follow-up seroprevalence were estimated at 52.0% (95% CI 44.9–59.0) and 56.7% (95% CI 48.2–65.3) with LFIA; and 80.7% (95% CI 74.1–87.3) and 81.1% (95% CI 74.4–87.8) with CLIA, with an overall IFR of 0.02%. There were 78.2% (95% CI 66.7–89.7) symptomatic individuals among the positive cases. Sensitivity and specificity of LFIA were estimated at 43.4% and 83.3% for IgM; 46.5% and 91.5% for IgG; and 59.1% and 77.3% for combined tests.

The authors found high seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies within the prison complex. The occurrence of asymptomatic infection highlights the importance of periodic mass testing in addition to case-finding of symptomatic individuals; however, the field performance of LFIA tests should be validated. This study recommends that vaccination strategies consider the inclusion of prisoners and prison staff in priority groups.