Histamine - occurrence, detection, and health risk to consumers.

Recent trends in food safety include the promotion of and search for compounds that can affect human health. One of such substances is histamine. Histamine formation in fish is related to the free histidine content in fish muscle, the presence of bacterial histidine decarboxylases, and certain environmental conditions. High histamine contamination of fish and fish products may cause food poisoning. Scombrotoxic fish poisoning (SFP) results from the consumption of contaminated fish from the Scombroide family and causes many symptoms in humans. Methods used for the detection of histamine include chromatography (HPLC, GC, TLC), ELISA, as well as fluorometric and colorometric techniques.