Characterization of food allergens: Recent advances

Characterizing the allergens from foods is very important for improving our understanding and diagnosis of food allergy. So far, only a limited number of food allergens has been characterized, from milk, egg, fish, shrimp, peanut, soybean, and some fruits and vegetables. Food allergens have a molecular weight from 12 to 70 kd and a protein, often enzymatic, composition. Some allergens are particularly widespread in nature, because they belong to groups of ubiquitous proteins, such as pathogenesis-related proteins, profilins and thiol proteases for the vegetable kingdom, tropomyosin and albumins for the animal kingdom. The basis of fuller characterization of food allergens relies upon the sound clinical definition of patients allergic to a given food item by reliable procedures such as the DBPCFC.