Investigation of heat and matrix effect on milk proteins' allergenicity and the development of hypoallergenic food products

Abstract

Background: Cow's milk allergy is one of the most common foodallergies during childhood. It has been shown that high heat can reduce some milk proteins’allergenicity (ß‐lactoglobulin). In this pro-ject we aimed to investigate the effect of heat and matrix on differ-ent milk protein fractions through Maillard reaction and eventuallydevelop hypoallergenic food products that have milk protein withlow reaction risk.Method: Milk cake matrix is prepared in different flour/sugar (F/S)ratio (2F/1S, 1F/1S, 0.5F/1S) and baked 30 minutes at 180°C. Pro-teins that cake contains are separated using SDS PAGE and stainedwith coomassie blue to check total protein. In parallel specific pro-teins are detected by western blotting using pooled sera frompatients with milk specific IgE>60kU/L for incubation. Results: In normal milk cake recipe (2F/1S)ß‐lactoglobulin bandsare disappeared but casein bands did not differ in size. In order toinvestigate the matrix effect F/S ratio is changed and it is found thatwhen this ratio decreases, with the affect of heat and maillard reac-tion, milk casein bands’intensities also decrease in SDS gel coomas-sie staining. In western blot experiments it is also shown that milkspecific IgE bound weakly to casein bands in low F/S ratio cake(0.5F/1S) whereas in cakes that have high F/S (2F/1S) ratio it boundsignificantly higher. Conclusion: Heat and matrix effect cause disruptions in milk caseinandß‐lactoglobulin proteins’structure and lower the milk specificIgE bindings to milk proteins in low F/S ratio cake through Maillard reaction.