The causative agent in meat responsible for recurring allergies is a carbohydrate- alpha-galactose, the study indicated. 60 people in Australia and the United States who experienced the recurrent severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis with no known cause were recruited for the study. Allergy tests revealed that 25 of the 60 patients had positive responses to alpha-galactose. The response was considered positive at a level greater than 1.0 international units per millilitre of immunoglobulin E (IgE). Furthermore, the tests did not identify any other allergens that would have explained the severe allergic reactions in the 25 patients who were positive for alpha-gal or in the other 35 patients.
Most humans release an antibody IgE to alpha-galactose. “So the problem becomes when people make IgE antibody to this sugar and then they eat meat or dairy products that contain the sugar then they get a delayed reaction. We believe that the presence of IgE antibody to this sugar is wider spread in the human population as a whole than we had initially expected,” said Dr. Scott Commins of the University of Virginia, who led the research.
Typically, anaphylaxis occurs within minutes, but in this case, the anaphylaxis may seem to appear out of the blue because the meat or dairy may have been eaten four to six hours earlier. Commins further added: “The typical scenario has been if you don’t react to food within two hours, then it’s not the food, in this case that doesn’t seem to be true.”
According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, approximately 3 million children younger than 18 years were reported to have a food or digestive allergy in the previous 12 months, and more than 3 percent of adults have one or more food allergies. Scientists believe their findings will pave the way for the development of new strategies to treat or prevent food allergies and anaphylaxis.
Written by Snigdha Taduri for BioMed-ME