Allergy 'Danger Zone' Identified For Foods

Food allergies can be confusing and even frightening, especially if you happen to have a particularly sensitive allergy, such as many nut allergies. For decades many victims of these conditions have always played it safe, steering clear of "may contain traces of..." labels. But wouldn't it be nice if they knew at what concentrations an ingredient is a threat? Researchers may now know for sure.

That's at least according to a study recently published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology which details how researchers from the University's Institute of Inflammation and Repair analyzed data on 436 people collected in the EuroPrevall project from across Europe.

All of the individuals were common food allergy sufferers, with minor to severe auto-immune reactions to peanuts, hazelnuts, celery, fish, or shrimp.

Each participant was repeatedly exposed to small and decreasing levels of their food allergen while researchers monitored their reactions. Ten percent of the group was differentiated from the rest as a group that still experienced reactions to even minute concentrations of an allergen - this being a commonly known problem with nut oils in particular.

Of that 10 percent, the team found that between 1.6-10.1 mg of hazelnut, peanut, and celery protein needed to be consumed to trigger an allergic reaction, while 27.3 mg of fish and 2.5 g of shrimp protein were required to produce a response.

"What we wanted was to find a level of allergen which would only produce a reaction in the most sensitive of people," researcher Clare Mills said in a statement. "This sort of data can then be used to apply a consistent level of warning to food products."

Mills and her colleagues explained that they hope to simplify how people can be proactive about allergies, especially in a world where the number of food allergy sufferers has increased by up to seven percent in the last few decades.

"What we'd like to see," she added, "are warnings which tell people with allergies to avoid certain products completely or just apply to those who are most sensitive."

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