Oorzaak wijnallergie bekend

Dat sulfiet in de wijn bij de consument een allergie kan veroorzaken, wisten we al. Ongeveer 8 % van het mensdom heeft last van zo’n reactie. Maar die valt maar in 12,5 % van de gevallen aan sulfiet toe te schrijven. Hoe zit het dan met de rest? Op die vraag denkt dr. Guiseppe Pelmisano van de Universiteit van Zuid Denemarken nu een antwoord te hebben gevonden. Het merendeel van de wijnallergieën ontstaat uit een combinatie van suiker en proteïne. Lees wat erover werd gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Journal of Proteome Reseach :

“One of life’s sadder statistics is that about 8% of people get sneezy and stuffy-headed after drinking wine. This mild allergic reaction is often blamed on preservative chemicals called sulphites, but they are responsible for only an eighth of cases. The reason for the rest is obscure. Giuseppe Palmisano of the University of Southern Denmark, however, thinks he knows the answer.

As he and his colleagues report in the Journal of Proteome Research, the culprits are glycoproteins—compounds composed, as their name suggests, of sugar and protein. That is not a complete surprise. Glycoproteins are implicated in several other allergies. But Dr Palmisano thinks he has identified the ones specific to wine.

To do so he started with a cheeky little chardonnay, treated it with ice-cold trichloroacetic acid and ethanol to precipitate any glycoproteins, then digested those glycoproteins into smaller molecules called peptides that can be analysed by mass spectroscopy. He screened the results against a database of known allergenic proteins. Three stood out. One is similar to allergenic proteins found in latex and pears. Another looks like a second latex protein and an olive protein, both known allergens. The third resembles one of the most rampant allergens of them all, a ragweed protein that causes hay fever.

Whether winemakers will be able to act on this knowledge is moot. But it might be possible to tweak the production process to reduce the presence of the allergens. In any case, you can now blame that stuffy feeling that comes after drinking on glycoproteins, not alcohol. Honest.”