Biogenic amines present in cheese – occurrence and threats

Abstract

SummaryThe review presents the general characteristics of biogenic amines present in cheese: the formation, the influence on the human body, the threats that ensue from the intake of them with food, the current limits of their amount in food and their ingestion, and also the methods of reducing the content of biogenic amines in food. Particular attention has been drawn to the presence of biogenic amines in cheese and the factors that determine the amount of these substances in cheese. The effect of microorganisms on the level of the amines in cheese, time and temperature of ripening and storing of cheese, as well as other factors like pH of cheese, salt concentration, pasteurization and homogenization of milk, accessibility of oxygen, redox potential, part of cheese and starter culture addition were discussed. The presented data indicate that biogenic amines are present in cheese in varying amounts, sometimes reaching levels toxic to humans. The main factors that increase the content of biogenic amines in cheese are microorganisms, in particular those not from the starter, long time and high temperature of ripening and storing. The decrease of biogenic amines content in cheese is favoured by pasteurization and homogenization of milk and by employment of high pressure on cheese (400-600 MPa). Other factors, such as pH, salt concentration, addition of starter cultures and herbs, accessibility of oxygen, redox potential also have an influence on the amount of biogenic amines in cheese; these, however, vary.

The range of protein hydrolysis and biogenic amines content in selected acid- and rennet-curd cheeses

“…The amounts for pecorino were observed from 4.4 to 2558 mg kg −1 , for smear cheeses from 1000 to 1184 mg kg −1 , for hard cheeses from 940 to 1030 mg kg −1 , for blue-veined cheeses from 21 to 1516 mg kg −1 , and for acid-curd cheeses as much as 2140 mg kg −1 (Bonczar et al 2017). …”

Biogenic Amines in Traditional Fiore Sardo PDO Sheep Cheese: Assessment, Validation and Application of an RP-HPLC-DAD-UV Method

“…As a matter of fact, cheese, mainly aged cheese, provides an excellent substrate for the production of BAs [32][33][34][35][36]. The constant presence of both a not sterile environment and casein proteolysis during all cheese making activities ensures the constant availability of free amino acids.…”

“…Although it should be possible to find cheeses in which the most common BAs are very low in concentration (also below the mg/kg level) [2,46], it is quite normal measuring, for each one, concentration levels in cheeses ranging between some tens of mg/kg, but it is not rare that the amounts found can also exceed the levels of hundreds [2,[47][48][49] or even the level of thousands [46,50,51] of mg/kg for His [46], Tyr [50,51], Put [46] and Cad [50]. Details of the different analytical approaches used for determining BAs in cheese have been extensively discussed in a number of excellent reviews on this topic [6,32,33,36,52,53]. Among others, liquid chromatography nowadays still represents the most preferred analytical choice [7,8,12,40,42,46,54,55], even sometimes coupled with a mass spectrometry detection [11,56,57].…”

Biogenic Amines in Traditional <em>Fiore Sardo</em> PDO Sheep Cheese: Assessment, Validation and Application of a RP-HPLC-DAD-UV Method

“…As a matter of fact, cheese and -mainly -aged cheese provides an excellent substrate for the production of BAs [32][33][34][35][36]. The constant presence of both a not sterile environment and casein proteolysis during all cheese making activities ensures the constant availability of free amino acids.…”

“…Although it should be possible to find cheeses in which the most common BAs are very low in concentration (also below the mg/kg level) [46,47], it is quite normal measuring, for each of them, concentration levels in cheeses ranging between some tens of mg/kg, but it is not rare that the amounts found can also exceed the levels of hundreds [47][48][49][50] or even the level of thousands [46,51,52] of mg/kg for His [46], Tyr [51,52], Put [46] and Cad [51]. Details of the different analytical approaches used for determining BAs in cheese have been extensively discussed in a number of excellent reviews on this topic [6,32,33,36,53,54]. Among others, liquid chromatography represents still nowadays the most preferred analytical choice [7,8,12,40,42,46,55,56], even sometimes coupled with a mass spectrometry detection [11,57,58].…”