Basic Study of Seafood Allergy for the Establishment of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Methods

Kim, H Y; Park, K H; Lee, H H; Jeong, B J; Kim, K E; Park, J W; Hong, C S; Lee, K Y

Abstract

PURPOSE
As the intake of seafoods is increasing, seafood allergy is suggested to be increasing, but the studies of its antigenicity is still rare and it is difficult to detect the exact food that causes allergic reaction. We studied the antigenicity of various seafoods that are widely consumed in our country, and analyzed antigenicity between them to establish the diagnostic and therapeutic methods.
METHODS
Nine seafoods were included in the study. They were 5 fishes (mackerel, saury, cod, alaska pollack, and tuna), one molluscum (squid), one crustacea (shrimp), and two shellfishes (oyster and sea mussel). After extraction of their crude allergen, we carried out SDS-PAGE and immunoblot with pooled sera of patients who had both positive allergy skin test and history of fish allergy.
RESULTS
The seafood proteins were separated into numerous bands with molecular weight ranging from 10-100 kD by SDS-PAGE. The lanes of mackerel, cod, alaska pollak showed similar patterns of protein separation and the lanes of oyster and sea mussel also showed similar protein patterns each other, but the other lanes all revealed different characteristic protein patterns, respectively. The immunoblot panels probed with sera of two patients with fish allergy exhibited IgE specific binding at molecular weight of 12 kD in the lane of mackerel, cod, and alaska pollack and IgE were specifically binded at molecular weight of 19 kD in lane of saury and of 37 kD in lane of tuna, respectively. There were no IgE specific binding in lanes of squid, oyster, sea mussel and shrimp.
CONCLUSION
Fishes do not share the common antigen with other kinds of seafoods and also different antigenicity was existed between some kinds of fishes.