Abstract
Celiac disease, wheat sensitivity, and allergy represent three different reactions, which may occur in genetically predisposed individuals on the ingestion of wheat and derived products with various manifestations. Improvements in the disease diagnostics and understanding of disease etiology unveiled that these disorders are widespread around the globe affecting about 7% of the population. The only known treatment so far is a life-long gluten-free diet, which is almost impossible to follow because of the contamination of allegedly “gluten-free” products. Accidental contamination of inherently gluten-free products could take place at any level from field to shelf because of the ubiquity of these proteins/grains. Gluten contamination of allegedly “gluten-free” products is a constant threat to celiac patients and a major health concern. Several detection procedures have been proposed to determine the level of contamination in products for celiac patients. The present article aims to review the advantages and disadvantages of different gluten detection methods, with emphasis on the recent technology that allows identification of the immunogenic-gluten peptides without the use of antibodies. The possibility to detect gluten contamination by different approaches with similar or better detection efficiency in different raw and processed foods will guarantee the safety of the foods for celiac patients.
Highlights
Wheat feeds one-quarter of the annual worldwide demand for plant proteins (60 metric tons) and has been the source of nutrition since the dawn of human civilization [1,2,3,4]
Given the problem associated with the commonly used gluten detection method, the major objective of this review is to look into other gluten detection methods, with better sensitivity and possibility for implementation in the food industry
In the case of chromatographic, antibody, or aptamer-based methods, one major concern in different countries that hinder the homologation of gluten food contamination in “gluten-free” food products, is the absence of a reference material designed for the specific wheat products, which will serve as the basis for analysis [142,143]
Summary
Wheat feeds one-quarter of the annual worldwide demand for plant proteins (60 metric tons) and has been the source of nutrition since the dawn of human civilization [1,2,3,4]. The only known treatment for gluten-associated disorders is a life-long wheat exclusion diet [14,16] Such a diet is difficult to follow because of the unintended contamination of “gluten-free” products, improper labeling, social constraints, and ubiquity of gluten proteins in raw or cooked food and pharmaceuticals [34,35,36]. There is sufficient evidence to support that even products derived from inherently gluten-free grains cannot be considered safe under the proposed FDA rules for gluten-free labeling [43,44,49,50,51,52,53,54,55] As most of these surveys were performed on the raw material, it is very likely, that processed food or convenience products, which have more chances of getting contaminated, will show even higher gluten contamination levels.
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