Life-threatening nut allergy is a growing public health problem in many countries including the United States. Causes underlying this alarming trend are incompletely understood and methods are urgently needed to prevent such immune reactions. Here, we tested the hypothesis that extrusion processing of hazelnuts will reduce in vivo allergenicity using an adjuvant-free mouse model of hazelnut allergy established in our laboratory. Groups of mice received transdermal exposure (TDE) to soluble extrusion processed hazelnut protein (EHNP) versus soluble raw hazelnut protein (RHNP) extract preparations. Mice were evaluated for systemic IgE antibody response (sIgER), hypothermia shock response (HSR), and mucosal mast cell response. Results showed that EHNP elicited a reduced sIgER compared to RHNP after 4 TDE but similar responses after 5 TDE. However, EHNP induced less HSR compared to RHNP upon oral challenge. Both protein preparations induced similar HSR upon IP challenge. Finally, we measured plasma mouse mast cell protease-1 (mMCP-1) levels after oral and IP injection challenges. We found that EHNP elicited reduced mMCP-1 response compared to RHNP upon both oral as well as IP injection challenges. These results suggest that it is possible to use extrusion processing to reduce in vivo allergenicity of hazelnut in a mouse model. This is also the first study demonstrating the utility of a mouse model to evaluate the effect of food processing on in vivo food allergenicity in general and hazelnut in particular.
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