Food allergy has been indicated as the most frequent adverse reaction to food ingredients over the past few years. Since the only way to avoid the occurrence of allergic phenomena is to eliminate allergenic foods, it is essential to have complete and accurate information on the components of foodstuff. In this framework, it is mandatory and crucial to provide fast, cost-effective, affordable, and reliable analysis methods for the screening of specific allergen content in food products. This review reports the research advancements concerning food allergen detection, involving electrochemical biosensors. It focuses on the sensing strategies evidencing different types of recognition elements such as antibodies, nucleic acids, and cells, among others, the nanomaterial role, the several electrochemical techniques involved and last, but not least, the ad hoc electrodic surface modification approaches. Moreover, a selection of the most recent electrochemical sensors for allergen detection are reported and critically analyzed in terms of the sensors' analytical performances. Finally, advantages, limitations, and potentialities for practical applications of electrochemical biosensors for allergens are discussed.
Keywords: allergens; aptasensors; bacteriophage-based biosensors; cell-based biosensors; electrochemical (bio)sensors; food safety; genosensors; immunosensors; molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) based biosensors; nanomaterials.