Quantification of Crustacean Tropomyosin, a Major Food Allergen, in Eight Species of Taiwanese Shrimp Based on Immunoassay

Shrimp is one of the most common food allergens in Taiwan. However, a simple method of measuring crustacean tropomyosin, the active allergen in shrimp is lacking. In this study, we aim to develop a validated enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for quantifying level of tropomyosin in eight shrimp species in Taiwan. Our ELISA showed high specificity to shrimp tropomyosin, and inter-day precision and intra-day precision were 8.7% when 0.2 ng/ml were used as standard test samples. Furthermore, our ELISA had 0.030 ng/mL limited of detection (LOD) and 0.064 ng/mL limit of quantification (LOQ). We found despite the steaming process, levels of tropomyosin were still detectable which indicate active allergen in processed shrimps. Our findings in this study suggest this ELISA method can be a useful technique to study shrimp allergen for future crustacean allergen research.