Dermatologic signs of food allergies in dogs and cats

June 12, 2020 My Vet Candy

Currently the use of elimination diets, followed by oral food challenges represent the “gold standard” for diagnosing skin-manifesting food allergies in dogs and cats. Regrettably, there is no clear consensus on how long one should wait for clinical signs to flare after an oral food challenge before diagnosing or ruling-out a food allergy in a dog or a cat.

Study results of nine papers that included 234 dogs and four articles containing data from 83 cats. When regrouping all cases together, about 9% of dogs and 27% of cats exhibited a flare of clinical signs in the first day after an oral food challenge, of which 21% of dogs and 29% of cats had a relapse by the end of the second day.

By 14 days after an oral food challenge, nearly all food-allergic patients from both species had shown a relapse of clinical signs. This study suggests that veterinary clinicians performing an oral food challenge need to wait for 14 and 7 days for more than 90% of dogs and cats with a skin-manifesting food allergy to have a flare of clinical signs, respectively.