DSC Study of the Effects of High Pressure and Spray-Drying Treatment on Porcine Plasma

One use of blood generated in abattoirs is to obtain dehydrated plasma which can be used as a functional ingredient in the preparation of foods. High hydrostatic pressure is a new technique for improvement of the sanitary quality of food products or their ingredients. The changes caused in the proteins by treatment can affect their functional properties, and differential scanning calorimetry DSC was therefore applied to detect possible conformational changes in the plasma proteins. The DSC results in the present study show that spray-drying does not appreciably affect the protein structure, but high-pressure treatment seems to have a denaturing effect.