ABSTRACT
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 Food Allergy: General and Clinical Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608 Immunology of Food Allergy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608 Factors Affecting the Acquisition of Food Allergy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 The Infl uence of Antigen and the Basis for Hazard Identifi cation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610 Hazard Identifi cation and Safety Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
Structural and Sequence Homology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613 Protein Resistance to Pepsin Digestion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613 Animal Models for Assessment of the Allergenic Potential of Proteins . . 614
General Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
Food allergy, by defi nition, describes the adverse health effects that result from the elicitation of allergic reactions to dietary proteins. This does not necessarily imply, however, that allergic sensitization is invariably acquired via dietary exposure to proteins. As will be discussed later in this chapter, sensitization to food proteins may develop following encounter via other routes of exposure.
