[Food intolerance: reliability and characteristics of different diagnostic alternative tests].

The expression "food intolerance" dates back to the ancient Greece and can be generally defined as a sum of unpleasant symptoms of varying etiology that can onset in some patients after the ingestion of various food products. Adverse reactions to food can be divided into toxic and non-toxic. The last ones are classified as immunologically mediated, called "allergies", and non-immunologically mediated, commonly defined as "intolerances". The gut wall is directly involved in these adverse reactions to some foods, since it plays a key role in food absorption and in the regulation of the immunitary system. In this paper we discuss food intolerances and allergies, evaluating the available diagnostic methods and their scientific reliability and focusing on IgG analysis based immunoenzymatic test which is the most relevant test for intolerance diagnosis.