[pitlove]

Hi Jo C-

There is no accurate test out there for food allergies. The serum testing is notorious for false positives and false negatives.

Each of those are different immunoglobulins in the body that are responsible for setting off certain histamine reactions. This SHOULD have been explained to you by the doctor that did the testing, but clearly it was not which makes these results useless as you can’t interpert them well.

If you want to do this correctly, you will need to start over and conduct a proper elimination diet. It is the gold standard for accessing food allergies. An elimination diet can be done a couple different ways.

Option 1: A home cooked diet of a single novel protein (something your dog has never had before) and a single carbohydrate (again, one your dog has never had before). This is to be the SOLE diet for 3 months. No treats, no table scraps, no flavored medications, no food from other pets, no dental chews, nothing at all but the diet.

Option 2: A commercially prepared hydrolyzed protein diet from the vet’s office. Same rules apply here. With these diets the protein molecules are so small that the bodys immune system does not recognize them as a threat and will not form a histamine reaction.

Once the 3 months is up, you can then do a food challenge and reintroduce the old food to see if the symptoms come back. If the dog is positive for food allergies, he/she should have improved over the course of the elimination trial. If the allergies are due to something in the environment, its likely no change in symptoms would occur.

This is very hard to do for most pet owners, but when done correctly will give you a definite answer as to if the dog has food allergies. Sorry, to say, but I would throw out your results from the serum test and see if you can get your money back. There has been an overwhelming amount of research proving that the reliability of those tests is very low.