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.