Screening to detect multiple food allergens

A new method that allows screening of a food sample for seven different allergens in one test has been developed, based on liquid chromatography and triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry in multiple reaction mode.

The assay allows the simultaneous detection of the allergens milk, egg, soy, hazelnut, peanut, walnut and almond following what is described by the authors as a simple homogenization, and digestion of the sample with trypsin. Concentrations of the allergens able to be detected in the screen range from 10 to 1000 parts-per-million.

A group from Eurofins, led by Dr Bert Pöpping, are responsible for the development of the method. They used incurred reference bread material, which was baked according to a standard recipe from the baking industry.

A team at AB SCIEX has carried out additional work in this area. They have reported their development of a rapid, robust, sensitive and specific LC-MS/MS assay for the simultaneous detection of peanut, milk, wheat and egg in processed foods at low part per million levels.

Reference 1: Heick et al. 2011 Journal of Chromatography A. Vol 1218(7), pp. 938-943 DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2010.12.067

Download article: The Detection of Allergens in Bread and Pasta by Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry [PDF 106 KB] (source: www.absciex.com)