Preparation of Blinded Food Matrixes for Clinical Oral Challenges.

Clinically, oral food challenges have value in the diagnosis and management of food allergy. Oral food challenges are used not only for diagnostic confirmation that ingestion of a specific food elicits an adverse reaction, but also for determining individual threshold doses, tracking the progress toward desensitization during immunotherapy, determining the effect of processing on the allergenicity of a specific food, assessing the allergenicity of an ingredient derived from an allergenic source, and tracking the progress toward development of age-related tolerance to a specific food. To eliminate bias in oral challenges, the food under investigation is masked in a matrix so that it is not sensorially detectable by the patient or the clinical observer.

Purification and Characterization of Naturally Occurring Post-Translationally Cleaved Ara h 6, an Allergen That Contributes Substantially to the Allergenic Potency of Peanut.

The 2S albumin Ara h 6 is one of the most important peanut allergens. A post-translationally cleaved Ara h 6 (pAra h 6) was purified from Virginia type peanuts, and the cleavage site was mapped using high-resolution mass spectrometry. Compared to intact Ara h 6, pAra h 6 lacks a 5-amino acid stretch, resembling amino acids 43-47 (UniProt accession number Q647G9) in the nonstructured loop.

Evaluation of a Handheld Gluten Detection Device.

A portable, handheld gluten detection device, the Nima sensor, is now available for consumers wishing to determine if gluten is present in food. By U.S.

Peanut Allergen Threshold Study (PATS): Novel single-dose oral food challenge study to validate eliciting doses in children with peanut allergy.

Background: Eliciting doses (EDs) of allergenic foods can be defined by the distribution of threshold doses for subjects within a specific population. The ED is the dose that elicits a reaction in 5% of allergic subjects. The predicted ED for peanut is 1.