ABSTRACT
Allergy to hen's egg is perhaps the most common paediatric food allergy worldwide. This is certainly true for Australia and North America. It is unclear what makes this otherwise nutritious, innocuous and widely consumed food quite so allergenic. The proteins responsible for the majority of allergic reactions to egg are thought to be present within egg white, as opposed to the yolk. Egg white is made up of approximately 90" water and 10" protein; this protein fraction constitutes just over half of the total protein content of an egg. Ovomucoid is the second most abundant glycoprotein by weight, and may be the dominant allergen in IgE-mediated egg allergy, primarily due to the resistance of its IgE-binding epitopes to heat and digestion. Given the rise in prevalence of food allergy in both the developed and developing world, attention is now keenly focused on strategies that will prevent the development or establishment of food allergy.
