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I made an appt today with my son’s naturopath to have IgG done. Have any of you gone this route to try to figure out what kind of foods you are sensitive to?
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Hi there,
Here’s what the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy have to say about these tests used by naturopaths. I’d save your money and use the proven route in exploring what your migraine triggers are – which requires using a daily journal to record your habits and the outcome in terms of migraine symptoms. Using this test from a naturopath will likely cause you to eliminate foods from your diet that are in fact not problematic.
Best … Scott
[size=140]Food specific IgG, IgG4[/size]
Use: Diagnosis of food sensitivity/ allergy.
Method: Antibodies to food are measured using standard laboratory techniques.
Evidence: Level II
Comment: IgG antibodies to food are commonly detectable in healthy adult patients and children, independent of the presence of absence of food-related symptoms. [size=140]There is no credible evidence that measuring IgG antibodies is useful for diagnosing food allergy or intolerance, nor that IgG antibodies cause symptoms.[/size] In fact, IgG antibodies reflect exposure to allergen but not the presence of disease. The exception is that gliadin IgG antibodies are sometimes useful in monitoring adherence to a gluten-free diet patients with histologically confirmed coeliac disease. Otherwise, inappropriate use of food allergy testing (or misinterpretation of results) in patients with inhalant allergy, for example, may lead to inappropriate and unnecessary dietary restrictions, with particular nutritional implications in children. Despite studies showing the uselessness of this technique, it continues to be promoted in the community, even for diagnosing disorders for which no evidence of immune system involvement exists.
Food specific IgE (RAST, ImmunoCap testing)
Use: Diagnosis of food sensitivity / allergy.
Method: Antibodies to food are measured using standard laboratory techniques. Some laboratories may present data inappropriately as raw counts or as “response factors”.
Evidence: will depend on the clinical scenario
Comment: Inappropriate used may be divided into three areas. (1) Inappropriate patient selection. As with any diagnostic test, use in patients where there is no evidence that food allergy plays a role in pathogenesis increases the likelihood of irrelevant false positive results. Use of food allergy testing in patients with inhalant allergy, for example, may lead to inappropriate and unnecessary dietary restrictions, with particular nutritional implications in children. (2) Misinterpretation of results. Low levels of food-reactive IgE are found in some healthy individuals without clinical reactivity. Challenge studies have shown a correlation between allergen-specific IgE and then likelihood of reactivity to some (such as cows milk, egg and peanut) but not all foods. In the absence of a history of clinical reactivity, low levels of allergen-specific IgE are usually of little diagnostic significance. (3) Inappropriate data presentation. Presentation of data as “raw counts” has no scientific or clinical rationale, has not been shown to correlate with clinical reactivity and renders results more liable to misinterpretation.
I’ve been reading here for an hour or so, and thought maybe I would register. I have a lot going on in my head at the moment, and am wondering if maybe someone here could give me their opinion.
