Allergy information for: Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum )

Clinical History

• Number of Studies:6-10
• Number of Patients:>50
• Symptoms:

  Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS), neurodermatitis, urticaria, nausea and anaphylaxis (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

  Urticaria/angioedema, dermatitis, oral allergy syndrome, rhinitis, and abdominal pain (Zacharisen et al. 2002) [922]

  Reche et al. (2001) [927] studied a group (A) of 30 non-latex-allergic patients, and a group (B) of 10 latex-allergic patients. In group A, the most frequent clinical symptom with tomato was oral allergy syndrome (OAS), although urticaria was the most frequent symptom in group B. In this group, anaphylaxis occurred in 20% of the patients.

Skin Prick Test

• Number of Studies:1-5
• Food/Type of allergen:Tomato fruit (de Martino et al. 1988) [950]
• Protocol: (controls, definition of positive etc)Epicutaneous (de Martino et al. 1988) [950]
• Number of Patients:102 children monosensitized (as to inhalant allergens) to grass pollen (de Martino et al. 1988) [950]
• Summary of Results:

  Positive reactions to tomato (39.2%) were observed in children with allergy to grass pollen. In children with positive skin test to tomato a 45% correlation with a positive RAST result were observed (de Martino et al. 1988) [950]

IgE assay (by RAST, CAP etc)

• Number of Studies:0
• Food/Type of allergen:

  Fresh tomato extracts prepared from the skin, seeds, and flesh of red, ripe tomatoes (Zacharisen et al. 2002) [922]

  Commercial tomato extract (Foetisch et al. 2001) [928]

  Tomato extract. To prepare this extract tomato pericarp was dissected and homogenized for 15 s in cold distilled water. After centrifugation at 2400 g for 10 min, the pellet was collected and resuspended in 1 m NaCl at pH 6 with 1 m NaOH. After stirring for 3 h at 4 °C, the debris was removed by centrifugation at 2400 g for 10 min. The supernatant was filtered and brought to 75% saturation with ammonium sulphate for 18 h. The precipitate was collected by centrifugation at 10 000 g for 20 min and suspended in 0.15 m NaCl (pH 6). This extract was dialysed against 0.15 m NaCl (pH 6) at 4 °C over two nights. The residues were removed by centrifugation at 10 000 g for 20 min. (Kondo et al. 2002 [949])

  Commercial tomato extract and recombinant Lyc e 1 (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

  Tomato extract. To prepare the extract 200 g of ripe tomato was washed, ground, and soaked for 1 h in 500 ml of PBS with 10 mM ascorbic acid as an antioxidant. The mixture was stirred for 2 h at 4°C and centrifuged at 7000 g for 40 min at 4°C. The supernatant was dialyzed (molecular weight cutoff: >3500 Da) at 4°C for 24 h against glycine, centrifuged at 15 000 g for 30 min at 4°C, and filtered through a 0.45-µm filter. The material was lyophilized. (Reche et al. 2001) [927]

• IgE protocol:

  ELISA and RAST (Zacharisen et al. 2002) [922]

  CAP-FEIA (Reche et al. 2001) [927]

  RAST (Kondo et al. 2002) [949]

  CAP, EAST, EAST inhibition and CCD (crossreactive carbohydrate determinants)-ELISA (Foetish et al. 2001) [928]

  ELISA, EAST, CAP-FEIA, histamine release (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

• Number of Patients:

  Two patients with adverse symptoms after ingesting tomato (Zacharisen et al. 2002) [922]

  Forty patients with a history of adverse reactions to tomato. The patients were divided into two groups; group A comprising 30 non-latex-allergic patients, and group B comprising 10 patients with latex allergy (Reche et al. 2001) [927]

  Five individuals with OAS after eating fresh tomatoes. (Kondo et al. 2002) [949]

  32 pollen-allergic patients with a history of adverse reactions to tomato (Foetisch et al. 2001) [928]

  50 patients with a positive case history of immediate type reactions to tomato fruit (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

• Summary of Results:

  RAST assays were positive to tomato in both patients (Zacharisen et al. 2002) [922]

  All patients showed specific IgE to tomato (Reche et al. 2001) [927]

  In RAST inhibition assays, the IgE binding from the sera from four out of five subjects with allergy to Japanese cedar pollen was inhibited by more than 50% by tomato fruit extracts. The IgE binding to tomato fruit was inhibited more than 50% by Japanese cedar pollen extracts in 3/5 sera. (Kondo et al. 2002) [949]

  Tomato allergy was found to occur with a prevalence of about 9% in a group of birch pollen-allergic patients. Of the patients with adverse reactions to tomato, 44% presented IgE to tomato profilin and 35.5% specific IgE to CCD. Two patients were sensitized to a lipid transfer protein in tomato (Foetisch et al. 2001) [928]

  Recombinant tomato profilin induced histamine release from human basophils in a range of 18-40% in a dose-dependent manner. Histamine release of up to 30% or 55% was obtained with the highest concentration of tomato extract. In the ELISA assays, 11 of 50 patients (22%) reacted with the purified recombinant tomato profilin (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

Immunoblotting

• Immunoblotting separation:

  Tomato protein extract was separated on either 12% or 7.5-20% polyacrylamide gels under reducing conditions (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

  Proteins were separated by sodium dodecylsulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) under reducing conditions (Westphal et al. 2003) [919]

  SDS-PAGE was performed with a 12% polyacrylamide separating gel and a stacking gel of 4% (Recher et al. 2001) [927]

  Sodium dodecylsulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was performed in a 16% Tris-glycine precast gel under reducing conditions (Kondo et al. 2002) [949]

  Proteins were separated by 2D-gel electrophoresis (Foetisch et al. 2001) [928]

• Immunoblotting detection method:

  The proteins were transferred onto nitrocellulose membranes. The membrane was incubated with patient sera (1:4). Bound IgE was detected by 125I-labelled anti-human IgE antibodies(1:20) and visualised by autoradiography (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

  For immunoblot analysis, proteins were transferred onto 0.45 µm nitrocellulose membranes by tank blotting and membrane was blocked in TBS/0.3% (v/v) Tween-20. After incubation with 1 : 10 diluted patients' sera, immunostaining of bound IgE antibodies was performed with an alkaline phosphatase conjugated anti-human-IgE antibody (1 : 750 dilution) and the developed with an alkaline phosphatase conjugate substrate kit (Westphal et al. 2003) [919]

  Proteins were electrophoretically transferred to a PDVF membrane using a minitransfer chamber. Blots were incubated with pool sera diluted 1:1. Alkaline-phosphatase-conjugated goat anti-human IgE (1:2000) was added and incubated. The blot was developed with an alkaline-phosphatase-conjugate substrate kit of nitroblue tetrazolium and 5-bromo-4-chloro-3 indolyl-phosphatase (Recher et al. 2001) [927]

  Proteins were transferred to Immobilon™ -P Membranes. For detection of bound IgE, a phosphatase-labelled goat anti-human IgE antibody diluted 1 : 2000 was used and developed with BCIP/NBT solution (Kondo et al. 2002) [949]

  Proteins were transferred to PVDF membranes (Foetisch et al. 2001) [928]

• Immunoblotting results:

  All the patients (11) displayed IgE binding to the 14 kDa protein (profilin) from the extract (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

  Out of 49 sera from German patients with tomato-related symptoms 18 (37%) recognized several bands above 20 kDa. From the Spanish group, 10 out of 29 (34.5%) sera showed reactivity in the high molecular mass range. The authors also detected binding to proteins with a molecular mass of 15 and 9 kDa (Westphal et al. 2003) [919]

  Group A of patients reacted to a double protein band at 44 and 46 kDa, a triple band at 67 kDa, several proteins at 20 and 30 kDa; and a protein between 14 and 20 kDa. In pool B, the profile obtained was similar to pool A, except that it had two more bands at 14 and 17 kDa (Reche et al. 2001) [927]

  The IgE binding to some protein bands from both Japanese cedar pollen and tomato fruit extracts are mutually inhibited, but the protein bands involved in this cross-reactivity differed between patients (Kondo et al. 2002) [949]

  One patient reacted specifically to a 43-kDa protein band on IgE immunoblot (Zacharisen et al. 2002) [922]

  Foetisch et al. (2001) [928] revealed beta -fructofuranosidase, polygalacturonase 2A, and pectinesterase as further tomato allergens.

Oral provocation

• Number of Studies:
• Food used and oral provocation vehicle:
• Blind:
• Number of Patients:
• Dose response:
• Symptoms:No oral provocation performed

IgE cross-reactivity and Polysensitisation

Other Clinical information

Reviews (0)

References (15)

• Kondo Y, Urisu A, Tokuda R
  Identification and characterization of the allergens in the tomato fruit by immunoblotting
  Int Arch Allergy Immunol. 126(4):294-9. 2001
  PUBMEDID: 11815736
• Weangsripanaval T, Nomura N, Moriyama T, Ohta N, Ogawa T
  Identification of suberization-associated anionic peroxidase as a possible allergenic protein from tomato.
  Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 67(6):1299-304. 2003
  PUBMEDID: 12843657
• Willerroider M, Fuchs H, Ballmer-Weber BK, Focke M, Susani M, Thalhamer J, Ferreira F, Wuthrich B, Scheiner O, Breiteneder H, Hoffmann-Sommergruber K
  Cloning and molecular and immunological characterisation of two new food allergens, Cap a 2 and Lyc e 1, profilins from bell pepper (Capsicum annuum) and Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum).
  Int Arch Allergy Immunol. 131(4):245-55. 2003
  PUBMEDID: 12915767
• Zacharisen MC, Elms NP, Kurup VP
  Severe tomato allergy (Lycopersicon esculentum).
  Allergy Asthma Proc. 23(2):149-52. 2002
  PUBMEDID: 12001794
• Kondo Y, Hsieh LS, Lin Y
  Cross-reactive allergens in Japanese cedar, mountain cedar pollen, and tomato extracts
  JOURNAL OF ALLERGY AND CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY 99 (1): 572-572 Part 2 Suppl.. 1997
  PUBMEDID:
• Reche M, Pascual CY, Vicente J, Caballero T, Martin-Munoz F, Sanchez S, Martin-Esteban M
  Tomato allergy in children and young adults: cross-reactivity with latex and potato
  Allergy. 56(12):1197-201. 2001
  PUBMEDID: 11736750
• Foetisch K, Son DY, Altmann F, Aulepp H, Conti A, Haustein D, Vieths S
  Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) allergens in pollen-allergic patients
  EUROPEAN FOOD RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY 213 (4-5): 259-266. 2001
  PUBMEDID:
• Westphal S, Kempf W, Foetisch K, Retzek M, Vieths S, Scheurer S
  Tomato profilin Lyc e 1: IgE cross-reactivity and allergenic potency
  Allergy. 59(5):526-32. 2004
  PUBMEDID: 15080834
• Petersen A, Vieths S, Aulepp H, Schlaak M, Becker W-M
  Ubiquitous structures responsible for IgE cross-reactivity between tomato fruit and grass pollen allergens.
  J Allergy Clin Immunol 98:805-815.. 1996
  PUBMEDID: 8876557
• Westphal S, Kolarich D, Foetisch K, Lauer I, Altmann F, Conti A, Crespo JF, Rodriguez J, Enrique E, Vieths S, Scheurer S
  Molecular characterization and allergenic activity of Lyc e 2 (beta-fructofuranosidase), a glycosylated allergen of tomato
  Eur J Biochem. 270(6):1327-37. 2003
  PUBMEDID: 12631291
• Kondo Y, Tokuda R, Urisu A, Matsuda T.
  Assessment of cross-reactivity between Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) pollen and tomato fruit extracts by RAST inhibition and immunoblot inhibition
  Clin Exp Allergy 32(4):590-4.. 2002
  PUBMEDID: 11972607
• de Martino M, Novembre E, Cozza G, de Marco A, Bonazza P, Vierucci A
  Sensitivity to tomato and peanut allergens in children monosensitized to grass pollen
  Allergy 43(3):206-13.. 1988
  PUBMEDID: 3377144
• Diaz-Perales, A, Collada C, Blanco C, Sanchez-Monge R, Carrillo T, Aragoncillo C. and Salcedo G
  Cross -reactions in the latex -fruit syndrome: A relevant role of chitinases but not of complex asparagine-linked glycans.
  J.Allergy Clin.Immunol. 104:681-687.. 1999
  PUBMEDID: 10482846
• Blanco C., Carrillo T., Castillo R., Quiralte J. and Cuevas M.
  Latex allergy: Clinical features and cross-reactivity with fruits.
  Ann. Allergy 73(4): 309-314.. 1994
  PUBMEDID: 7943998
• Beezhold D.H., Sussman G. L., Liss G.M. and Chang N.S.
  Latex allergy can induce clinical reactions to specific foods.
  Clin. Exp. Allergy 26: 416-422.. 1996
  PUBMEDID: 8732238

Biochemical Information for Lyc e 1

• Allergen Name:Lyc e 1
• Alternatve Allergen Names:
• Allergen Designation:Minor
• Protein Family:

  Profilin, Pfam PF00235

• Sequence Known?:Yes
• Allergen accession No.s:

  Q8VWR0:Swissprot: http://ca.expasy.org/cgi-bin/niceprot.pl?Q8VWR0

  AY061819; EMBL

  Q93YG7:Swissprot: http://us.expasy.org/cgi-bin/niceprot.pl?Q93YG7

  AJ417553 EMBL

• 3D Structure Accession No.:Not determined
• Calculated Masses:

  14080 kDa (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

  14257 kDa (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

• Experimental Masses:16 kDa (Petersen et al. 1996) [161]
• Oligomeric Masses:None
• Allergen epitopes:Not known
• Allergen stability:
  Process, chemical, enzymatic:

  There are only few studies on the stability of profilins most of them on celery profilin. Compared to other allergens, profilin is a moderately stable protein, more resistant than Bet v 1 homologues but less stable than lipid transfer proteins or corss-reactive carbohydrate deteminants of glycoporein allergens.

• Nature of main cross-reacting proteins:

  Purified rLyc e 1completely abolished the IgE binding to rCap a 2 (bell pepper profilin)(Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

  Western blotting performed by Petersen et al (1996) showed that profilin contributes considerably to the IgE cross-reactivity between tomato fruit and grass pollen.

  Western blotting assays and ELISA inhibition experiments showed cross-reactivity with birch (Bet v 2) and celery (Api g 4) profilins (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

• Allergen properties & biological function:The allergen is tomato profilin which is thought to be an actin and phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate binding protein involved in the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton and signal transduction.
• Allergen purification:Tomato profilin has been cloned and expressed in E. coli based on the tomato pollen profilin.The recombinant non-fusion protein was purified via PLP affinity chromatography (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]; (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]).
• Other biochemical information:

  pI 4.71(Westphal et al. 2004) [918]. pI 4.46 (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

  Different profilin isoforms are thought to be present in tomato fruit (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]

  Lyc e 1 sequence shows a high degree of identity (76-86%) to other plant profilins such as cherry (Pru av 4), pineapple (Ana c 1), banana (Mus xp 1), carrot (Dau c 4), celery (Api g 4) and birch (Bet v 2). Bell pepper showed the highest identity (91%) (Westphal et al. 2004) [918]; (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]).

  Lyc e 1 is found predominantly as dimers in solution, which can be reduced to monomers, with higher IgE binding capacity (Willerroider et al. 2003) [914]

References (3)

• Petersen A, Vieths S, Aulepp H, Schlaak M, Becker W-M
  Ubiquitous structures responsible for IgE cross-reactivity between tomato fruit and grass pollen allergens.
  J Allergy Clin Immunol 98:805-815.. 1996
  PUBMEDID: 8876557
• Westphal S, Kempf W, Foetisch K, Retzek M, Vieths S, Scheurer S
  Tomato profilin Lyc e 1: IgE cross-reactivity and allergenic potency
  Allergy. 59(5):526-32. 2004
  PUBMEDID: 15080834
• Willerroider M, Fuchs H, Ballmer-Weber BK, Focke M, Susani M, Thalhamer J, Ferreira F, Wuthrich B, Scheiner O, Breiteneder H, Hoffmann-Sommergruber K
  Cloning and molecular and immunological characterisation of two new food allergens, Cap a 2 and Lyc e 1, profilins from bell pepper (Capsicum annuum) and Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum).
  Int Arch Allergy Immunol. 131(4):245-55. 2003
  PUBMEDID: 12915767

Biochemical Information for Lyc e 2

• Allergen Name:Lyc e 2
• Alternatve Allergen Names:Beta-fructofuranosidase
• Allergen Designation:Minor
• Protein Family:

  Glycosyl hydrolases family 32, Pfam, PF00251

• Sequence Known?:yes
• Allergen accession No.s:

  Q8RVW4:Swissprot:http://ca.expasy.org/cgi-bin/niceprot.pl?Q8RVW4

  AF465613; AAL75450.1; - EMBL

  Two isoforms, D11350; S70040 GenBank

• 3D Structure Accession No.:Not known
• Calculated Masses:60141.85 Da
• Experimental Masses:One isoform of 51 and another of 60 kDa (Westphal et al. 2003) [919]
• Oligomeric Masses:None
• Allergen epitopes:Not determined
• Allergen stability:
  Process, chemical, enzymatic:Not determined
• Nature of main cross-reacting proteins:No cross-reactivity has been described
• Allergen properties & biological function:Beta-Fructofuranosidase, also known as acid invertase (EC 3.2.1.26) catalyses the hydrolysis of sucrose into glucose and fructose. The Beta-fructofuranosidase of tomato was shown to play an important role in the regulation of hexose accumulation during fruit ripening
• Allergen purification:

  Lyc e 2 has been purified from lyophilized tomato extract by hydrophobic interaction chromatography and gel chromatography (Westphal et al. 2003) [919]. The same authors have cloned and expressed the cDNA of two different isoforms of the protein, Lyc e 2.01 and Lyc e 2.02 in E. coli. The recombinant proteins were purified by electroelution and refolded.

• Other biochemical information:The protein has a pI 5.4

References (1)

• Westphal S, Kolarich D, Foetisch K, Lauer I, Altmann F, Conti A, Crespo JF, Rodriguez J, Enrique E, Vieths S, Scheurer S
  Molecular characterization and allergenic activity of Lyc e 2 (beta-fructofuranosidase), a glycosylated allergen of tomato
  Eur J Biochem. 270(6):1327-37. 2003
  PUBMEDID: 12631291