49I-10 |
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H.-W. WEN, Food Science & Technology, Cornell University, 630 W North St, Geneva, NY 14456 and R. A. Durst, Food Science & Technology, Cornell Univ., New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, 630 W. North St., Geneva, NY 14456-1371. The peanut is one of the primary allergenic foods that can cause anaphylaxis. Annually, thousands of people are sent to emergency rooms after accidentally eating peanuts, and approximately 50 to 100 people die. The only way to prevent severe allergic reactions is strict avoidance of peanuts. However, this is difficult because food labels are not always clear and foods may be accidentally contaminated with peanuts in the production lines or during preparation. Currently, a home test kit for peanuts is not available. Our objective is to develop a sensitive, portable, and inexpensive home test kit for the rapid detection of peanuts in foodstuffs. The format design for our test is a competitive assay between free peanut allergens and allergen-tagged liposomes on a nitrocellulose membrane strip. First, the major peanut allergen, Ara h1, was purified from raw peanuts by defatting, ammonium sulfate precipitation, and preparative chromatography. Antibodies raised against this allergen were purified from rabbit antisera by a protein A affinity column and immobilized onto membrane strips. Ara h1 was conjugated to liposomes encapsulating a red dye. In the assay, the Ara h1-liposomes compete with free sample Ara h1 molecules for the immobilized anti-Ara h1 antibodies. This competition produces a colored band, the intensity of which is inversely proportional to the amount of free Ara h1. Preliminary results indicate the detection limit of this assay for Ara h1 is 100 µg/mL. The assay can be completed in less than 5 minutes following sample preparation. The assay conditions are still being optimized, and it is expected that the detection limit will be significantly lowered. Since the peanut-allergic population is large and growing, and hypersensitive reactions to peanuts can cause fatalities, the development of a simple, rapid, easily interpreted peanut home test kit such as this is urgently needed.
Session 49I, Toxicology & Safety Evaluation: General
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