A recently published opinion paper considers the lack of standardisation for the clinical and scientific assessment of proteins before they are labelled as allergens. The authors maintain that food allergens are being reported and recorded in allergen databases, with minimal or in some cases apparently no published justification; IgE binding, rather than clinically relevant reactivity, is inappropriately used to confirm allergenicity.

The paper challenges current methods for reporting allergens, using kiwifruit as an example and suggests a set of minimum requirements for a protein to be designated an allergen. Further topics that need to be considered by the scientific community are also put forward.

Reference: Clinical and Experimental Allergy 2008, Vol 38, pp. 1095–1099.