Abstract
The diagnosis of food allergy requires both definitive symptom evoked episodes and the detection of the specific IgE. In addition, knowledge of the allergen components of each causative food is essential for the interpretation of specific IgE. In peanut allergy, Ara h 2, one of the 2S albumins, is the allergen component with the highest diagnostic accuracy. Though peanut allergens contain the similar types of protein families as other tree nuts allergens, the amino acid sequence homology between them are relatively low, so the clinical cross reactivity is not frequent. On the other hand, cross-reactive carbohydrate determinant which is a glycoprotein with high structural similarity seen in many plants sometimes cause the detection of clinically inactive IgE antibodies. This review gives an overview on the characteristics of peanut allergy and the interpretation of the allergen components.
