Allergens of Arachis hypogaea and the effect of processing on their detection by ELISA
Sammanfattning
Food allergies are an emerging public health problem in industrialized areas of the world. They
represent a considerable health problem in these areas because of the relatively high number of
reported cases. Usually, food allergens are proteins or glycoproteins with a molecular mass ranging
from 10 to 70 kDa. Among the food allergies, peanut is accounted to be responsible for more than
50% of the food allergy fatalities. Threshold doses for peanut allergenic reactions have been found to
range from as low as 100 µg to 1 g of peanut protein, which equal to 400 µg to 4 g peanut meal.
Allergens from peanut are mainly seed storage proteins that are composed of conglutin, vicilin, and
glycinin families. Several peanut proteins have been identified to induce allergic reactions,
particularly Ara h 1-11. This review is mainly focused on different classes of peanut allergens, the
effect of thermal and chemical treatment of peanut allergens on the IgY binding and detectability of
these allergens by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to provide knowledge for food
industry.