Capsaicin is most often used as a topical analgesic and exists in many formulations of cream, liquid, and patch preparations of various strengths; however, it may also be found in some dietary supplements. Capsaicin is a naturally-occurring botanical irritant in chili peppers, synthetically derived for pharmaceutical formulations. The most recent capsaicin FDA approval was Qutenza, an 8% capsaicin patch dermal-delivery system, indicated for neuropathic pain associated with post-herpetic neuralgia.
Feeling hot, hot, hot? Capsaicin is a naturally occurring botanical irritant in chili peppers, synthetically derived for pharmaceutical formulations. Capsaicin is also often used as a topical analgesic and exists in many formulations of cream, liquid, and patch preparations of various strengths; however, it may also be found in some dietary supplements. The measure of hotness of a chili pepper or anything derived from chili peppers, such as hot sauce, is measured using the Scoville scale. The scale is a measure of the concentration of capsaicin, which is what gives chili peppers their heat. The Scoville Scale is measured by what is called Scoville Heat Units (SHU). These units’ range on a spectrum from 0 (no heat at all) to 16,000,000+ (pure capsaicin). The range of SHU is typically used to call a pepper mild, medium, hot, or extra hot and these will range from mild (50 to 2,500), medium (2,500 to 30,000), hot (30,000 to 100,000), and extra hot (100,000 to 500,000). Anything above that is extreme. For example, a bell pepper would have zero SHU because it does not contain capsaicin. On the other hand, pure capsaicin would have 16 million SHU.
Determining Scoville heat units classically involves diluting a pepper extract with sugar water and then asking human testers to identify the heat level. The more sugar water is required to negate the heat, the higher the number of Scoville Heat Units that pepper contains. So, for example, if you have a pepper with 100,000 SHU, the extract from it would need to be diluted 100,000 times which would then allow the testers to no longer detect any spiciness. While this method is clearly useful, it was also obviously quite subjective since it relies on human testers. This method has since been replaced with expensive and time-consuming methods such as Gas Chromatography (GC), Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to become more quantitative. Clearly, the quantitative determination Scoville heat units are cumbersome and requires skilled personnel. There has got to be an easier way to determine how much to ‘spice up your life’, no?
To make the SHU determination process easier and readily available for hot sauce manufacturers of all sizes, Attogene has recently developed a sensitive and rugged lateral flow assay for detecting the concentration of capsaicin in a hot sauce sample with minimal laboratory equipment or training. Once the capsaicin concentration is determined, it can be converted into Scoville heat units using a simple conversion factor.
Attogene has developed a rapid, user friendly lateral flow assay for detection of capsaicin. This technique can be used by the hobby or industrial hot sauce maker to understand, screen and evaluate the levels of capsaicin in their products during or after manufacturing. The levels of capsaicin can then be readily translated into SHU units. Just as Chili
Pepper X recently dethroned the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper, our assay might just be able to dethrone other more classical ones in this field.
