Effetto dei trattamenti tecnologici sulla allergenicità degli alimenti: il caso dei trattamenti termici.

The allergenicity of foods can be altered by several technological procedures, such as heat and enzymatic treatments. Moreover protein digestibility can be strongly affected by thermal processing, which induces modifications on the chemical, physical and immunological characteristics of the potential allergens. To date, studies on alteration of allergenicity of foods deriving from processing are scanty. For example, we have investigated the effects of baking and digestion on the wheat flour proteins allergenicity and our results have indicated that some wheat allergens, as for example the wheat 16 kDa protein, can be destroyed after baking, whereas others can be made more resistant to digestion by the same heating process, thus allowing their interaction with the gut mucosa in an immunological active form. Therefore this type of studies, that consider both processing and digestion effects, should be applied to all the products that provoke symptoms of food allergy when are ingested after being processed