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The Food Allergy Clinical Evidence (FACE) database is a compendium of published medical literature on food allergies. The database was created not only for experts such as health care professionals and researchers, but also for patients and the general public.

Medical research on food allergies is currently being conducted on a global scale, and can be broadly classified into basic research including animal experiments and studies on cellular functions, and clinical research including morbidity surveys and therapeutic studies. All of this research is intended to provide useful information for patients and potential patients. In other words, research is being conducted for use not only by health care professionals, but also members of the general public. However, there are very few opportunities for the general public to directly realize the results of this research. Even when reported by the mass media, medical research is often described in a way that distorts or partially exaggerates the facts. The FACE database was therefore created to allow members of the general public to directly access the results of food allergy research in the form of medical literature. Needless to say, the database is also available to experts, who we hope will apply the information to current medical treatment and research.

Clinical research is the branch of medical research that directly impacts the routine treatments provided by health care professionals, and the findings of clinical research are also relatively comprehensible to members of the general public. The FACE database therefore contains literature based on clinical research. The database currently focuses on systematic reviews with a high level of evidence*, and provides access to the entire contents of articles that are searched according to a search method described elsewhere.

* The evidence level of clinical research findings (i.e., the degree to which the research findings are assessed as factual) is determined according to the research design (i.e., the method by which the research is conducted). Systematic reviews, which have the highest level of evidence, comprehensively evaluate all of the previous clinical research on a particular topic. These reviews are believed to contain the most factually reliable findings because they minimize various research biases (e.g., research that only targets young patients or specialized medical facilities).

• The FACE database provides the unedited contents of medical literature. How these findings are applied to actual medical treatment is largely determined by the patient’s circumstances, including the severity of the disease, the patient’s condition, medical circumstances and social environmental factors. As such, the treatments or therapies described in these articles are not necessarily beneficial to all patients. Therefore, the contents of the literature should only be considered as a reference.
• The articles listed on FACE are current up to the most recent database update, so any literature published after this date will not be listed. New discoveries in the field of medicine are occurring every day so we ask our database users to refer to the most up-to-date literature when providing or receiving medical treatment. Also note that some of the articles on the database cannot be published in their entirety due to copyright issues.

1. To patients: We encourage you to access and “face” the available medical literature.
2. To health care professionals: We encourage you to “face” your patients when providing medical treatment in clinical settings.
3. And don’t forget that the findings of medical literature simply represent one “face” of the truth.

Please use the query form to send us any comments or suggestions that you may have. We look forward to receiving your feedback. Please note, however, that we cannot respond to questions on individual treatment or therapy.

作成者

[作成責任者]

二村昌樹（国立病院機構　名古屋医療センター　小児科）
Masaki Futamura

[作成協力者（五十音順）]　

• 小野学　（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Manabu Ono
• 酒井一徳（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Kazunori Sakai
• 崎原徹裕（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Tetsuhiro Sakihara
• 杉浦至郎（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Shiro Sugiura
• 田上和憲（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Kazunori Tagami
• 田島巌　（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Iwao Tajima
• エリザベス　ドニー（Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology, University of Nottingham）
  Elizabeth Donney
• 遠山優子（認定ＮＰＯ法人　アレルギー支援ネットワーク）
  Yuko Toyama
• 花田優　（国立病院機構　名古屋医療センター　小児科）
  Yu Hanada
• 林直史　（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Naohumi Hayashi
• 中川朋子（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
  Tomoko Nakagawa

[監修]

伊藤浩明（あいち小児保健医療総合センター　アレルギー科）
Komei Ito

本研究はJSPS科研費 25860897 の助成を受けたものです。
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25860897.