Pediatric allergy and immunology : official publication of the European Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology
Association of early life anti-pathogen immune responses with infant food sensitisation and allergy: An elastic-net stability-selection approach
By McDonald E, Biering-Sørensen S, Pittet LF and 2 others.
Abstract
Background
The development of food sensitisation (FS) and food allergy (FA) reflects complex interactions between genetic, environmental and immunological factors, which conventional univariate approaches may fail to capture. This exploratory study applied penalised regression to determine whether early-life immune responses to common pathogens are associated with infant FS and FA.
Methods
At 1 year of age, FS was determined by skin prick test and FA by allergy/tolerance history and oral food challenge. Elastic net regression (ENR) was applied to cytokine response data (13 cytokines) from whole blood stimulation (11 microbial stimuli) collected at 6 months of age (n = 147), together with longitudinal clinical data from MIS BAIR trial infants. Stably selected variables (0.75) were analysed by multivariable logistic regression to explore the direction of association of the stably selected variables.