The Role of RANTES in a Murine Model of Food Allergy

Food allergy is an important and common health issue, and there is a need to identify and characterize the sensitizing mechanisms. One of the common causes of food allergy is ovalbumin (OVA), a dietary antigen from eggs. We hypothesized that OVA‐induced food allergy in the gut involves the activation of the chemokine regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted (RANTES), which then recruits eosinophils to lesioned tissue. The purpose of this study was to clarify whether RANTES expression correlates with eosinophil infiltration in the gut of OVA‐sensitized BALB/c mice in response to oral OVA challenge. BALB/c mice were immunized with OVA 1 µg and sensitized after 2 weeks by intragastric administration of OVA. Sensitization to the oral OVA challenge was analyzed by examining eosinophil infiltration into the gut tissue (immunohistochemistry), mucosal eosinophil cationic protein (ECP) concentration, and RANTES mRNA expression (reverse‐transcriptase polymerase chain reaction and Southern blott...