Best way of allergy testing?

[hayleyhew]

Does anyone know a good way of testing children for allergies? I thought about testing the hair? How long do you leave it before doing another test - to see what allergies they have grown out of?

[flack]

They were talking bout this on Radio 4 prgramme the other night, you could fine it and Listen again? Was one of the 9pm science programmes... Tues or Weds night this week?

I remember them saying they did a tiny scratch on the skin, exposed person's scratch to a very small amount of substance (very diluted if anafalectic shock was risk), and waited at least 20 minutes for a reaction. Then waited a while longer before testing a different substance.

There are special allergy clinics but very few, apparently. What I described is what the clinics were doing.

[Chandra]

We are planning to have DS tested again for intolerances this month and RASTs for allergies at the beggining of next year. Last tests were a year ago, and tbh we are probably just wasting our money. We want to believe things are getting better but looking at the food diary, it doesn't look very promising...

About hair testing (I guess via Chinese medicine) is not recognised as a reliable method for allergy testing but... hey ho, every test has a certain degree of unreliability so... who knows? I would be a bit careful with any result while trying to reintroduce ofending foods.

[Chandra]

Flack, those are skin prick tests. Sadly, waiting lists for them are long as life (we waited for one for 18m) and are still in the waiting list because, surprise surprise, after all that time waiting we got the appointment and the few things we thought may have been outgrown couldn't be tested for because they had run out of serum or was past its "best before..." date...