Abstract: Peanut allergy is a global food safety problem, and its incidence is increasing year by year. In severe cases, it can cause fatal allergic reactions. As there is currently no effective curative treatment for this disease, avoiding peanut ingestion has become a major prevention and control strategy. However, due to problems such as label errors and cross-contamination in the whole food chain, peanut allergens are often unintentionally introduced and continue to threaten the health of allergic people. Therefore, the development of peanut allergen detection technology with high sensitivity, high accuracy, and rapid response has important practical significance for ensuring food safety. In this article, the structural characteristics and allergenic mechanism of the major peanut allergenic proteins (Ara h 1, Ara h 2, Ara h 3, and Ara h 6) are systematically reviewed, highlighting that understanding the stable conformation and strong allergenicity of such proteins is crucial for developing protein allergen detection technologies. Meanwhile, the performance characteristics and limitations of traditional methods and emerging biosensor technologies in terms of sensitivity, specificity, operational portability, and applicable scenarios are summarized. Studies have shown that traditional methods have limitations such as weak anti-interference capacity, inability to reflect protein activity, and strong equipment dependence, while electrochemical biosensors have shown great potential in on-site screening due to their high sensitivity, rapid response, and portability. In the future, we should promote the standardization of this technology, improve its anti-interference capacity, reduce its costs, and accelerate its transformation from the laboratory to food chain supervision, thereby providing key technical support for peanut allergy prevention and control.

Key words: peanut allergy; allergen detection; biosensor technology; food safety