Food allergy is defined as an immune-mediated adverse reaction to certain foods. To avoid the onset of allergic symptoms, food-allergic patients have to exclude specific offending foods from their diets. In some cases, very small amounts of food allergents can induce anaphylactic reactions, so that food allergic patients strictly have to avoid allergens even from cooking devices. Therefore appropriate cleaning procedures are the most practical approaches for reducing bontamination of allergens from instruments.
In this study we washed instruments contaminated with egg white, milk, or wheat by some different vonditions, which are commonly used at home and restaurants. Subsequently, we selected sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) to check for residual proteins and allergens on istruments. The analysis showed the presence of egg-white proteins, such as egg lysozyme (14.3 kD), ovalbumin (45 kD) and ovotransferrin (76.6 kD) after washing the instruments with only water. Several protein hands had apparent molecular masses that matched with those of known milk allergens, such as casein (19-25 kD) and β-lactoglobulin (18.3 kD). Wheat proteins were also detected in those molecular masses ranging from 23 to 136 kD, which are corresponding to glutenin and gliadin. In the case of carefully washing condition using with detergent, a sponge and water, hen egg lysozyme and molecular complex of casein were detected, while wheat protein was undetectable.
From these results, carefully cleaning of instruments by using sponge, detergent and water can aid patients with revere food allergies to avoid allergic reactions.