Information on popular complementary and alternative medical topics

OTHER FORMS OF FOOD ALLERGY: LECTINS

Whereas the lectin found in raw or badly cooked kidney beans is damaging to almost everyone, other lectins are more selective – indeed, the word lectin comes from a Latin word meaning ‘choosing’. Each of us is slightly different in our chemical make-up, and one important way in which people vary is in the short carbohydrate molecules that sit on the surface of our body cells. It is mainly these carbohydrates to which the lectins bind, and they are highly specific for the individual sugars that make up the carbohydrate. Each type of lectin is specific for a particular sugar. (There is also a short carbohydrate chain in every antibody molecule, and it may well be that lectins trigger mast cells by binding to the carbohydrate component of IgE.)

It seems likely that individual differences in the carbohydrate chains (either on the cell surface, or in IgE molecules) could make some people susceptible to a particular lectin which has no adverse effect on the majority of the population. There is some evidence for this in coeliac disease. But if susceptibility to particular lectins causes false food allergy why is this

problem so rare? The answer must be that natural selection has weeded it out, because it would have been a serious disadvantage among our distant ancestors if an important element in the diet could not be eaten. Any individual who suffered such an affliction would probably have died early, without leaving any offspring. In this way, the genes that could make a person susceptible to false food allergy would have remained very rare. But even such damaging genes can survive if they are capable of being masked by other ‘healthy’ genes – this means that some people can carry the gene, without suffering any ill-effects, and pass it on to their children.

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