Medical Questions » Allergy Questions » Question No. 22
| Question: | Q How do you find out if you are allergic to something. Can blood tests tell you? I am already allergic to cats, but want to find out if there is something else causing my hay fever. |
| Answer: | Allergies to specific substances can be detected by skin tests or blood tests. In the skin test, a minute amount of the suspected substance is scratched into a very small area of skin. The reaction of that skin area is then checked regularly over several days. In blood tests, specific antibodies (chemicals produced in the body in response to invading allergic substances) are sought and identified.
You need to have a fairly good idea what is causing your allergy before the tests are done, as the test is for a very specific substance. Several hundred things can be tested for, but each one requires a separate blood or skin test, and this can prove to be very uncomfortable and expensive, as Medicare only subsidises a limited number of these tests under very specific circumstances. |
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