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Allergy to sesame oil

Question:

9/25/2012
4/12/2018
Do you know if sesame oil contains any clinically-significant amount of sesame allergen? I could not find any answers. Sesame oil is used a fair amount in food products. Sesame seed allergy is not all that rare. I am not referring to homemade sesame oil that an artisan gourmet cook may decide to make from scratch one day in the kitchen. I am referring to "normal" food that are bought in a grocery store or consumed at popular restaurants (such as chain-Asian restaurants or Americanized Chinese restaurants, etc)

Answer:

Thank you for your inquiry.

There is a wealth of evidence that anaphylactic reactions can occur to the ingestion of sesame oil (Reference Numbers 1 through 7). In looking through these references, one gets the sense that these reactions can occur after the ingestion of commercial sesame oil preparations.

Thank you again for your inquiry and we hope this response is helpful to you.

References:
1. Chiu JT, Haydik IB. Sesame seed oil anaphylaxis. J Allergy Clin Immunol 1991;88:414-15.
2. Kanny G et al: Sesame seed and sesame seed oil contain masked allergens of growing importance. Allergy 1996: 51: 952-957.
3. Diagnosing IgE-mediated hypersensitivity to sesame by an immediate-reading “contact test” with sesame oil.
4. Cristiana Alonzi, Paolo Campi, Francesco Gaeta, Fernando Pineda, Antonino Romano et al.
5. Short communication June 2011; Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Vol. 127, Issue 6, Pages 1627-1629.
6. Anaphylaxis to sesame (Sesamum indicum) seed and sesame oil.WJ Stevens, DG Ebo, CH Bridts, LS De Clerck - Abstract- January 2002
7. Sesame allergy: a growing food allergy of global proportions? Venu Gangur, Caleb Kelly, Lalitha Navuluri - Review article, July 2005; Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Vol. 95.

Sincerely,
Phil Lieberman, M.D.