Among the world today, allergies are one of the most serious health problems. Therefore, it is important to find anti-allergic substances contained in the every day food we eat. Sensitive methods to quickly detect anti-allergic components in food samples should also be established. In our present paper, we modified our previous method of inducing mouse anaphylaxis (mouse anaphylactic hypotension; MAHT), by applying this method to the assay in search of anti-allergic substances. Mice sensitized with Hen Egg-white Lysozyme (HEL) fell in antigen specific anaphylaxis on the seventh day, just after challenged with HEL. This is because of hypotension caused by the released histamine (HEL-specific mouse anaphylactic hypotension; HEL-MAHT). In this system, diphenhydramine (DH), one of the most typical anti-allergic drug was used as the standard anti-allergic aubstance. When administered intraveneously, 1h before being challenged, a dose of 0.1 to 10mg/kg of DH showed effective inhibition to the HEL-MAHT by 3% to 60% (Fig. 1). Administration of a given dose of DH at a different time frame, before being challenged, resulted in a reasonable time dependent inhibition of HEL-MAHT. Several anti-allergic drugs other than DH also showed similar dose and time dependent inhibition of HEL-MAHT. For the primary application, extracts from garlic, welsh onion, Chinese chive and dried mushroom were tested for their anti-allergic activities. They showed inhibition of HEL-MAHT by 9% to 24%, which corresponds to 0.2-0.3mg/kg of DH. Therefore, it can be concluded that our method can be applicable for the detection of anti-allergic substances in food.
