CHAPTER 16: Applications of Egg Yolk Antibody (IgY) in Diagnosis Reagents and in Prevention of Diseases
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Published:01 May 2019
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Special Collection: 2019 ebook collection
H. Hatta and Y. Horimoto, in Eggs as Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals for Human Health, ed. J. Wu, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019, pp. 305-328.
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This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the advantages of IgY compared to IgG before moving on to discuss the two main applications of IgY for human health. The first application is in diagnostics owing to IgY's binding specificity to given antigens: the use of IgY in immunological assays for clinical testing can eliminate the interference and false positives normally experienced when using mammalian IgG. In this section, we provide an overview of diagnostics and describe ABO blood typing and our work on the measurement of C-reactive protein and insulin using IgY. The second important use of IgY is in passive immunization therapy, wherein its ability to bind to specific antigens (pathogens, venoms, etc.) serves to neutralize their pathogenicity. Then, recent research on the therapeutic potential of IgY for the prevention of obesity and the treatment of celiac disease is introduced. Finally, monoclonal IgY antibodies and their applications are discussed. This chapter focusses on human health; related applications of IgY in the field of disease prevention and treatment in fish and domestic animals can be found elsewhere.