Three species of mackerels (Scomber japonicus, S. australasicus and S. scombrus) are widely consumed and considered to be most frequently involved in incidents of IgE-mediated fish allergy in Japan. In this study, parvalbumin, a possible candidate for the major allergen, was purified from the white muscle of three species of mackerels by gel filtration on Sephadex G-75 and reverse-phase HPLC on TSKgel ODS-120T. All the purified preparations from three species gave a single band of about 11 kDa and were clearly identified as parvalbumins by analyses of their partial amino acid sequences. In ELISA experiments, four of five sera from fish-allergic patients reacted to all the purified parvalbumins, demonstrating that parvalbumin is the major allergen in common with the mackerels. Antigenic cross-reactivity among the mackerel parvalbumins was also established by ELISA inhibition experiments. A cDNA library was constructed from the white muscle of S. japonicus and the cDNA encoding parvalbumin was cloned. The amino acid sequence translated from the nucleotide sequence revealed that the S. japonicus parvalbumin is composed of 108 residues, being a member of beta-type parvalbumins.