Authors: Martin Röder Helene Filbert Thomas Holzhauser
Publish Date: 2010/08/22
Volume: 398, Issue: 5, Pages: 2279-2288
Abstract
Foodallergic individuals have to strictly avoid the offending food because no causative immunotherapies are available Thus reliable labelling of allergenic ingredients or precautionary labelling of crosscontacts with potential allergens is of major importance Verification of compliance with labelling requirements and identification of crosscontacts demand test methods that enable the specific and sensitive detection of the analyte Brazil nut Bertholletia excelsa is such a food commodity with allergenic potential We describe the development of a novel qualitative realtime polymerase chain reaction PCR specific for Brazil nut DNA and its comparison with a qualitative commercially available lateral flow device LFD that detects Brazil nut protein Specificity was investigated with 58 foods and no falsepositive reactions were observed in realtime PCR The sensitivity was investigated with spiked chocolate and incurred dough samples as well as cookies baked thereof The simultaneous spiking of matrices with identical amounts of Brazil nut and peanut between 5 and 100000 mg/kg allowed the verification of the spike quality with two peanutspecific enzymelinked immunosorbent assay The realtime PCR detected Brazil nut in all three matrices down to the lowest investigated spike level of 5 mg/kg The realtime PCR results from the analysis of 15 retail samples were confirmed by LFD results and were in concordance with the labelling of products The realtime PCR showed unparalleled specificity and primary data indicated potentially quantitative features in spiked and retail samples Because of entirely reproducible chemistry of this realtime PCR this is the first generally available Brazil nutspecific detection method with an appropriate sensitivity to help avoid severe allergic reactions for Brazil nutallergic individuals
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