Chicken egg allergy is frequently observed in infants, some of who therefore have to avoid hen's egg from daily diet to eliminate unfavorably allergenic symptoms. Hen's egg is composed of two soluble parts; one is egg white which has been characterized as major in allergenic portion, while the other is egg yolk which is estimated as miner in that, regardless of less accumulation of research in allergenicity of egg yolk proteins.
So that using the method of immunoblot analysis, IgE-binding capacity against chicken egg proteins in egg yolk as well as egg white was determined in ten sera from infantile patients with chicken egg allergy. In egg white proteins, all of the serum IgE recognized ovalbumin, and two of that bound to ovomucoid. While in egg yolk proteins, serum IgE from one patient but not the others clearly bound to the protein at the molecular weight weight of 35 kD. This protein was also detectable as an aooarent band on SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis stained by Coomassie Brilliant Blue R-250 and estimated to be phosvitin, which is a hydeophobic apolipoprotein originally synthesized by the liver, translated to the ovary through the blood stream, and then packaged into egg yolk.
These results raise that the general tendency of strong allegenicity against patients suffering from chicken egg allergy is in egg white rather than in egg yolk, and suggest that phosvitin si a candidate for noticeably allergenic molecule in egg yolk.