Dog Allergy Food Screening

There is no 100% accurate rapid test method for screening dog food allergies. Currently, the gold standard recognized by veterinary dermatology around the world is the "food elimination-provocation test." The accuracy of commercially available household allergen test strips and serum-specific IgE tests generally fluctuates between 30% and 60%. They can only be used as an auxiliary reference and cannot be used as the sole basis for judgment.

A while ago, I helped a friend who raised a Corgi find out about her dog's allergy problem - the girl felt sorry for her dog and fed her dog a homemade food of salmon + quinoa for two years. The dog scratched its ears intermittently and suffered from interdigital inflammation. She spent nearly 5,000 yuan on two serum allergen tests, and the results showed a severe allergy to beef. She didn't even dare to touch the dog with a beef-flavored molar stick, and the symptoms still didn't improve. Finally, after an 8-week elimination test, I discovered that the dog was not allergic to beef at all. The allergen was quinoa, which he ate every day. The previous test report did not even include quinoa as an option, which meant that he had suffered for two years in vain.

Interestingly, the pet medical community is currently divided into two groups regarding food allergy screening. The mainstream view of the European and American Veterinary Dermatology Association is that more than 90% of food allergies are delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions and are not IgE-mediated. Serum testing cannot catch the signal of such allergies at all, so it is not recommended to include serum testing in routine screening items for food allergy.； However, many domestic pet hospitals still give priority to recommending serum testing, and the reason is very practical: it takes 2 hours to draw a tube of blood to produce results, which can cover 20-50 common food ingredients. For owners who do not have time to spend two or three months doing elimination tests, it is better to get a reference to narrow the range first than to guess blindly. Both sides are reasonable, but the core point is that you have to understand the limitations of the test and don't just treat the results as an imperial edict.

When many people hear that they need to do an elimination test, their first reaction is to buy "hypoallergenic food". Nine out of ten people fall into this trap. The most outrageous owner I have ever seen bought a duck meat hypoallergenic food from a certain Internet celebrity. After feeding it to her dog for half a month, her dog still had soft stools. When I took a look at the ingredients list, the third item clearly said hydrolyzed chicken liver. Her dog happened to be allergic to chicken, so she was feeding allergens every day during the elimination period. It was definitely useless. If you really need to do an elimination test, when choosing a food, just look at the ingredient list. It is best to have a single animal protein + a single carbohydrate. The less other miscellaneous additions, the better. Do not use any probiotics, attractants, or flavoring agents. If you are really unsure, just cook skinless chicken breast + steamed pumpkin/rice, which is more reliable than any commercial food.

Oh, by the way, there is also the length of the elimination period, and there is no unified standard answer. Some doctors say that 4 weeks is enough, and some want you to feed for 8 weeks. In fact, it depends on your dog's allergic symptoms: if it is an acute allergy that causes vomiting after eating or an acute rash, 4 weeks is enough to metabolize it, but if it is a delayed allergy with repeated soft stools and chronic skin inflammation, many dogs will not see significant relief of symptoms until the 6th or 7th week of feeding. Don't rush to change after just two weeks of feeding without any effect, as it will be a waste of time.

Don’t think that only weird ingredients can cause allergies. Clinically, the top three allergenic ingredients are what everyone feeds every day: chicken, beef, and dairy products. Together they account for more than 70% of food allergy cases. On the contrary, everyone thinks that novelties are more “safe” Proteins such as venison and ostrich meat have a low allergy rate, but it is not completely impossible. I encountered a border collie before, ate a bite of dried venison given by a friend, and had diarrhea for three days. At first, I thought it was a parvovirus infection, but it took me until midnight to find out that it was an allergy. Many people also ask, "My dog ​​has been fine eating this food for three or four years. How could he be allergic?" ”This is actually the same as when people suddenly become allergic after eating mangoes for more than ten years. The tolerance of the immune system will change. If the same ingredient is repeatedly exposed to the same food for a long time, allergies will break out one day.

Finally, let me mention a detail that is easily overlooked: Don’t feed random things during the elimination period, such as snacks, teething sticks, nutritional pastes, or even when giving medicines. Some pills have lactose added to the sugar coating. If your dog happens to be allergic to dairy products, eating it will affect the results. After the symptoms completely disappear, add a new food every week and observe for 3 days after adding. If there are no soft stools, itching, or worsening of tear stains, it means that you are not allergic to the food. If it does, the allergen is basically locked, and there is no need to do other tests.

In fact, to put it bluntly, dog food allergy screening does not have so many fancy high-tech methods. The dumbest method is the most accurate. It is nothing more than spending more time and being patient. After all, it is better to make the dog suffer less, right?