allergen desensitization

[wasabi-glow]

Hi folks! I would like info about allergen desensitization. Can someone direct me to the right link? My Paris is having recurrent fungal/bacterial infections and the doc referred me to a Derma Vet who may put my lil Frenchie on allergen desensitization. Is this necessary? I heard it may be too costly :confused: .. please put input if your babies had them before. Thanks.

[gmacleod]

Hmmm. That's not something I've heard of often with dogs. But basically, when a person or a dog is allergic to something, two possible options exist for treatment: the first is allergen avoidance (so if you happen to know what he's allergic to, you can just avoid it) and the second is allergen-specific immunotherapy (desensitisation). Actually there is a third thing, and that's treating the symptoms with meds - but that's only treating symptoms, not the cause, and all meds can have side effects.

Basically, desensitisation involves injecting the dog with increasing amounts of the substance to which he is allergic until a state of tolerance is achieved. According to one site I found (admittedly aimed at people, not dogs) this would take about 15 weeks of injections... They also note that this treatment is not suitable for everyone, and in some cases can result in the person (or presumably animal) going into anaphylactic shock (which is life-threatening). Here's that article - even if it's actually aimed at people, I think it gives you a good overview of what desensitisation is all about: http://www.allergy-clinic.co.uk/desensitisation.htm

To be honest, I don't think I would consider this for a dog except in very extreme circumstances. And I wouldn't consider repeated fungal infections to be that extreme. I may be a bit overly suspicious, but I would wonder a little about the motives of a vet proposing that sort of prolonged treatment (and prolonged bills) for a dog with fungal infections...

Do you know exactly what it is that he's allergic to? Allergy testing isn't that expensive (especially compared ongoing allergy injections) - and presumably would need to be done prior to this treatment anyway. Hard to imagine how he can be given increasing doses of the relevant allergen(s) unless it is known specifically what he is allergic to. But if it is known what is causing the problem, it may actually be possible for you to go with solution #1 and just avoid the offending substance...

In my experience, repeated yeast/fungal infections are very often related to food. So if you happen to be feeding him something that contains any form of corn, wheat, soy, beat pulp or brewers rice, you might find that changing his food to something of better quality (or better yet, raw) would help a lot. Another thing you could look at is adding a natural anti-yeast product into his diet - such as plain natural yoghurt (the sort without any sugar and with bacterial cultures acidophillous and bifidous). That can even be applied topically to help keep yeast populations down.

[gmacleod]

Just to add to that, here's another - more pet-oriented - site with some useful information. http://www.2ndchance.info/allergicskin.htm They say:
Approximately one in twenty of my clients elect to undergo skin testing and desensitization of their pets. This figure differs from practice to practice. The procedure takes a bit over a year to show results. Dermatologists argue for the procedure pointing out, correctly so, that even if desensitization does not cure the pets, it may lower the dose of corticosteroids they require later in the disease. Skin testing also identifies the allergens and perhaps some of them can be avoided or eliminated from the pet’s environment. The procedure is extensive, expensive, and requires a life-long commitment to frequent injections. Most owners learn to give these injections themselves.

Since it is clear that you have to do allergy testing before embarking on desensitizaton treatment (which is life-long and apparently may take a year to produce any results), personally I'd be inclined to first make an assessment of what it is he turns out to be allergic to. If it is things that it is possible to eliminate his exposure to, I'd go that way ;)

[ledhed]

Hi folks! I would like info about allergen desensitization. Can someone direct me to the right link? My Paris is having recurrent fungal/bacterial infections and the doc referred me to a Derma Vet who may put my lil Frenchie on allergen desensitization. Is this necessary? I heard it may be too costly :confused: .. please put input if your babies had them before. Thanks.

As someone with a fair amount of training in the sciences, I can tell you that the scientific basis for allergen desensitization is suspect at best. Allergies just don't really work like that, and from my understanding, it seems that a desensitization regimen is at least as likely to make things worse, or as mentioned, result in anaphylaxis, which is a life threatening emergency.

That being said, I haven't done extensive research on the subject of allergen desensitization specifically, and paradoxical crazy effects are sometimes seen with certain therapies.... giving you the exact opposite effect of what you'd expect. So anything is possible, quite literally.

Also, I would point out that fungal/bacterial skin infections are not allergies per se (which is not to say that the two are not related, just seperate entities). Allergies are caused by environmental stimuli that would not normally cause a problem, but some individuals are especially sensitive..... their immune system mounts a response to something that should not normally produce a reaction. For example, most people can eat and be around peanuts, no problem... but for someone with an extreme allergy to peanuts, just being NEAR peanuts can be life threatening. The reason that this happens is not really known. This type of response is mediated by the IgE class of antibodies.... these are more or less specific to an allergic response (i.e. not seen in fungal/bacterial infection). Per gmacleods link, allergy desensitization specifically targets the IgE mediated immune response. Conceivably, scratching from a skin allergy might produce microtrauma or otherwise deplete the body's natural defenses, opening the door to fungal/bacterial infections.

Disease causing bacteria and fungus, on the other hand, will cause disease in every dog if given the opportunity (e.g. poor nutrition, immune-deficiency, specific susceptibility). Bacteria and fungus will produce a different kind of immune response, mediated by antibodies of the IgG and IgM class (also maybe IgA for gut infections). Allergen desensitization will do nothing to stop this, unless an underlying allergy is opening the door to it in the first place.

So what does all this mean? As a general rule of thumb, if it were my dog, and we're not talking about a life threatening condition, I would go with a more conservative approach. It is much easier and safer to avoid the problem than to start tinkering around with the immune system. As gmacleod pointed out, I would try to figure out specifically what the allergy is (or if there is an allergy at all). My understanding is that this is usually done with an elimination diet first, skin testing if that doesnt work. Unless you have established for sure that an allergy is the underlying root problem, I would consider the possibility that there could be another cause of the recurrent infections. Nutritional support/supplements, will almost never hurt the situation. Maybe boosting the immune system with a supplement... something like echinacea (although this has no more scientific support than allergen desensitization, just cheaper and less potentially harmful, IMO). Some other things that I could think of off the top of my head that might cause recurrent skin infections: over/underwashing, nutritional deficiencies of specific vitamins/minerals, specific immune (Tcell) deficiencies, glandular deficiencies or aplasia..............

Sorry for the immunology lecture...hope it helps a little.... my 2 cents....

JL.

[wasabi-glow]

Thank you very much for the input GMACLEOD. This helps me a lot!!! appicon

BTW, are you the new moderator? What happened to BULLDOGWORLD (OLLY)?

[wasabi-glow]

Wow! I love this forum... thank you very much LEDHED for your input as well.

[gmacleod]

Excellent information from Ledhead :)

BTW, are you the new moderator? What happened to BULLDOGWORLD (OLLY)?
Olly is still around - LOL he's the site owner, so if he disappeared, so would bulldogworld :eek: Unlikely, however ;)
And yes, I'm a new moderator here. I moderate Boxerworld mostly, but Olly had asked me to help out on Bulldogworld as well :)

[Mokeymunster]

Having gone through this allergy stuff with my boxer i can share my story and hope it helps. Her symptoms started around 4 months of age, red itchy ears infections between the toes, flank sucking. Just a generally itchy dog, oh and to add icing to the cake was the diarrhea that was pretty much always there. The treatment that was origanally proposed was steriods, it worked, just fine for all aspects even the diarrhea. But she was six months old and looking at a life of drugs, drugs, drugs. We went and saw the allergy vet and discussed our options, i didn't want a puppy on so many drugs from the get go that it was going to drastically shorten her life. We decided in order to tackle this we needed to know what was causeing the problem. An allergy test soon followed, i alway say this is such an important step and recomend it to everyone that is having itchy dog issues. How do you decide how to treat without knowing the cause?? Well low and behold our answer came jumping out at us. I watched as they did the intradermal skin testing. One little bump just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was for ceral mites(this is found in anything dry) So, in turn we find out that her food no matter what brand or type was making her itchy. So to canned food we went. Everything was going well, i had doubts about going further and doing the desensitization all was going well, I had removed the main allergen from her diet.

Then the diarrhea came back. Long story short, mokey my not even year old pup now had fibre responsive IBD. So the vet that diagnosed and worked with me about the IBD said she needs to be on a dry food to get this under control. Then we began the injections to lessen her reaction to dry foods in order to control the IBD without the big bad steriods. Well she is two and a half now, happily recieving her injections every 20 days, eating dry kibble and not having diarrhea or allergic reactions.

There is some $ to be spent when you get started, but it evens out in the end, I figure that if she wasn't on the injections I would be in the vet office way more often and she would be on a array of drugs. At one point in time I recall having to get her pills together for a day trip to the doggy kennel and she was getting 14 pills per day. I think the cost of the injections are much better than that.