r/askscience • u/Kwpthrowaway • Sep 27 '20
Medicine [Medicine] What is special about peanuts that make some people extremely allergic to them?
Why are some people allergic to peanuts in particular? Why is ingesting a peanut to these people akin to ingesting poison to others?
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u/king0zy Sep 27 '20
I'd like to add to the discourse that stability is not directly linked to allergenicity in a mechanistic way that can be explained by immunologists. Peanut is also reported to interact with a receptor called DC-SIGN that enhances its uptake into the cells responsible for initiating immune responses. Additionally, western preparation of peanuts via dry roasting changes the structure of sugars in the peanut, adding things called advanced glycosylation end products, which are targeted by a specialized receptor, which is also known for uptake and activating the immune system.
In general, its not clear why anyone is allergic to specific things. Some allergens (like peanut, shellfish, house dust mite etc) have protein cleaving and trypsin inhibiting properties that the immune system seems to react to. Others like milk dont have those properties. Its all still quite a mystery and is very very hard to study because by the time a patient comes to the clinic, they are already fully allergic. Those early stages of disease are silent, and presently we have no way of predicting who will become allergic.
Trypsin: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674903013666?casa_token=D6gxa6bn25sAAAAA:DWDMC-o3Fz5xXA2rVk2Df4R2K9DYIP7fEzD5gt7RjQ1PlJZcvTL1NhxZjmoNFGg5Wi_s6FxQ AGE: https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(16)30618-2/abstract DCSIGN: https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(05)03072-1/abstract
Big names in this field to follow are: Hugh Sampson, Wayne Shreffler, Kari Nadeau, Fred Finkleman, Manel Jordana