Recent advances and challenges in food-borne allergen detection

Abstract Food allergy is reported as the commonest adverse reaction to food components, whose prevalence has increased in recent years. As food avoidance is mainly in practice the only way to prevent hypersensitive consumers from ingesting allergenic substances, it is imperative to provide complete and accurate information on food ingredients. In this scenario, there is a need for precise, fast and cost-effective methods for the high-throughput screening of specific allergen content in food products. This work reviews recent approaches, existing kits for food-borne allergen detection and cutting-edge applications by focusing on the sensitivity, selectivity and applicability of current methods in food samples. In addition, the advantages, benefits and limitations of each approach are discussed to establish the most suitable methods and which challenges are to be addressed in forthcoming years from an analytical viewpoint.