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Health Canada consultation: add asparaginase to dangerous foods?

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Health Canada is consulting the public about adding the enzyme to fried potato products and dough-based foods to reduce cancer-agent acrylamide to Feb 21, 2010)

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Please note: this article has been amended (Dec 23, 2009). It begins with information from the Health Canada consultation web pages, and is followed with additional information on Asparaginase - the enzyme in question.

From the Health Canada website:

Although this document was previously consulted on with domestic stakeholders in early 2009, this consultation has been re-opened for a period of 75 days in order to fulfill Health Canada’s obligation of allowing the international community opportunity to comment.

This document provides information on Health Canada's proposal to amend the Food and Drug Regulations ("Regulations") to allow the enzyme asparaginase to be used in the manufacture of certain food products, including wheat dough-based products such as bread, crackers and cookies, cut potato products such as French fries, sliced potato products and fabricated potato chips. It includes a summary of the information considered by Health Canada scientists in their assessment of the safety of asparaginase.

{snip}

The purpose for using asparaginase in food manufacture is to reduce asparagine in food, and thereby reduce the risk of formation of acrylamide. Acrylamide is formed as a reaction product between asparagine and reducing sugars when certain foods are baked or fried at temperatures exceeding 120°C. Both asparagine and reducing sugars are commonly found in many raw food materials. Dietary exposure to acrylamide has been identified as of potential concern by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA).

From the Acrylamide entry in Wikipedia
There is evidence that exposure to large doses can cause damage to the male reproductive glands. Direct exposure to pure acrylamide by inhalation, skin absorption, or eye contact irritates the exposed mucous membranes, e.g., the nose, and can also cause sweating, urinary incontinence, nausea, myalgia, speech disorders, numbness, paresthesia, and weakened legs and hands. In addition, the acrylamide monomer is a potent neurotoxin, causing the disassembly or rearrangement of intermediate filaments. Ingested acrylamide is metabolised to a chemically reactive epoxide, glycidamide.

It has also been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals.

Amendment:
What about side effects from Asparaginase itself?

A variation of Asparaginase is marketed under the name Elspar to treat acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In other words, it is a chemotherapy agent.The BC Cancer Agency classifies it as "antitumour antibiotic, cytotoxic". Their list of contraindications include:

• Asparaginase is contraindicated in patients with a history of an allergy to asparaginase, or past or present pancreatitis.
• Erwinia asparaginase is contraindicated in patients with a history of allergy to Erwinia asparaginase, or past or present pancreatitis.
  

Known potential side effects of Asparaginase: agitation; chills; confusion; depression; drowsiness; fatigue; fever; hallucinations; headache; hives; irritability; joint pain; loss of appetite; muscle pain; nausea; rash; vomiting; weight loss; allergic reactions; pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas); and coagulopathy (blood clotting disorders, potentially leading to bleeding and stroke). (That list was compiled from Drugs.com and Wikipedia - links to applicable research follows.)

As an aside and as a reminder, the addition of folic acid (which is beneficial to neurological development in fetuses, and thus important for pregnant women) to our flour has coincided with an increase of colon cancer - a trajectory seen in 42 countries. The results were echoed again in November of this year in Swedish results published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found a 21% increase in mortality with the supplementation.

PubMed studies

A 1971 Yale University study by the departments of Medicine and Pharmacology called "Immunological responses to l-asparaginase" available in PubMed (id = PMC292030) found:

In a series of 40 patients treated with L-asparaginase for various neoplastic diseases, 6 patients had generalized anaphylactic reactions to L-asparaginase.

Also see the US National Library of Medicine - Medical Subject Headings for asparaginase

Compare the Health Canada consultation page information: "Asparaginase is an enzyme that hydrolyses an amino acid, asparagine, to aspartic acid by hydrolyzing the amide in free asparagine. Asparaginase has no activity on asparagine residues in peptides or proteins. Aside from free asparagine, asparaginase only acts on free glutamine. It has no activity on other amino acids."

With this passage from a Finnish study published in November of this year (PubMed ID 1996641 - emphasis added): "Bacterial L-asparaginases have been used in the treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia for over 30 years. Their therapeutic effect is based on their ability to catalyze the conversion of L-asparagine, an essential amino acid in certain tumours, to L-aspartic acid and ammonia. Two L-asparaginases, one from Escherichia coli and the other from Erwinia chrysanthemi, have been widely employed in clinical practice as anti-leukaemia drugs. However, L-asparaginases are also able to cause severe side effects owing to their intrinsic glutaminase activity. Helicobacter pylori L-asparaginase (HpA) has been reported to have negligible glutaminase activity."

Which variety are they wanting to include in the food items in question? "Asparaginase is produced by pure culture submerged fed-batch fermentation of a genetically modified strain of Aspergillus oryzae (A. oryzae) carrying a gene coding for an asparaginase enzyme from A. oryzae."

The relevant Health Canada consultation pages can be found at the following link.

Link

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