The infants that cannot digest cow’s milk protein have problems in several organ systems showing more than one different symptoms in that organ systems (Isolauri 1997). These symptoms are mainly come from the gut, the skin and the respiratory tract (Hill, Firer et al. 1986). All the above can be referred as Cow’s Milk Allergy (CMA). CMA is an Immunoglobulin E (IgE)-mediated hypersensitivity reaction and it is a food allergy. The term food allergy describes the adverse immunologic response to a food protein (Waserman and Watson 2011). The protein content is what leads to the sensitization and allergy of humans. These proteins contain the allergenic segments which are between 10 to 70 kDa in size, water-soluble glycoproteins such casein in …show more content…
Cow’s milk allergy can be treated only with completely elimination from infant’s diet of the responsible antigen showing alternation of the symptoms (Isolauri 1997). Breastfeeding of the babies is considered the golden standard for infant nutrition, the development of hypoallergenic infant formulas are a good replacement of human’s milk for the babies diagnosed with CMA of at risk of developing it (Knipping, Simons et al. 2014). Hypoallergenic infant formulas are whey protein partially or extensively hydrolyzed products derived by enzymatic, heat and/or ultrafiltration treatment of cow’s milk proteins. These formulas can be characterized by assessing the molecular weight distribution of the residual peptides with Gel Permeate Chromatography (GPC) method in the end of the hydrolysis process. However, the peptide size distribution cannot be the only indication of the residual allergenicity of the protein hydrolysates (Halken, Hansen et al. 2000). The residual detection of allergens in the infant formulas can be also assessed by ELISA and SDS-PAGE, western blotting and silver stain assays (van Esch, Knipping et al. 2011) determining the level of β-lactoglobulin (BLG) and α-lactalbumin (ALA) in the hydrolysates. As it was illustrated before in bovine milk the whey represents only the 20% of the total Cow’s milk proteins and the major allergenic proteins in the whey