ALCAT Testing – pro
The antigen leukocyte cellular antibody test (ALCAT) is a proprietary test created and promoted by American Medical Testing Laboratories and Cell Science Systems, of Deerfield Beach, Florida. They market the procedure as an in-vitro screening test for adverse reactions to specific foods, food additives, food colourings and other chemicals. The test has been reformulates several times. IT is generally considered to be an unproven test(1). “These results have been shown to not be reproducible, give different results when duplicate samples are analysed blindly, don’t correlate with those from conventional testing, and ‘diagnose’ food hypersensitivity in subjects with conditions where food allergy is not considered to play a pathogenic role.”(3) A recent supportive study can certainly be characterized in this way(2).
1.Gerez IF, Shek LP, Chng HH, Lee BW (2010 Jan). “Diagnostic tests for food allergy”. Singapore Med J 51 (1): 4–9
2.Mohammed Akmal, Saeed Ahmed Khan, Abdul Qayyum Khan (April 2009). “The effect of the ALCAT test diet therapy for food sensitivity in patient’s with obesity”. The Middle Eastern Journal of Family Medicine 7 (3).
3.Mullins Raymond J (on behalf of the Education Committee) (November 2007). ASCIA position statement: unorthodox techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of allergy, asthma and immune disorders. Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy.
Read the Layperson version here.