Italian version of this article available

The ALCAT test is one of today's most valid non-conventional alternatives for evaluating non IgE mediated food hypersensitivities, that is, Delayed Food Allergies. In practical terms, the test is performed like the cytotoxic test. However, thanks to a series of scientific evolutions that have been applied to it, the ALCAT is quite different from the cytotoxic tests that have been employed up to now, bringing it close to a practical application scheme that is objective and has marked qualities of scientific repeatability.

The fundamental differences between the ALCAT and the cytotoxic test are:

• it is performed on a specific group of granulocytes and platelets, while the cytotoxic is performed on whole blood;
• reacting solids are gelatinized with an "FDA approved" procedure, offering a better guarantee of antigen solubility and thereby avoiding the great incidence of "false positives" that occur with classic cytotoxic tests due to the presence of fragments of the solid irritant substances in the cell membrane;
• computerized reading of cell enlargement in order to avoid subjectivity errors that can be induced by the optical character recognition.

The ALCAT test must be interpreted with the same logic as for the Great Food Groups in order to continue to provide practical results that are reproducible and applicable. Personally, I often use the ATSP 20 kit and the 25 version (to reduce as much as possible the costs and optimize the study of the substances relative to the Great Food Groups) and Chem 10, which contains the 10 additives and preservatives that are most connected with the Great Food Groups or at any rate most representative of the European diet.  In fact, the ALCAT can also be performed on chemical substances, drugs, additives and preservatives in addition to food substances.

A kit will be available in April of 2008 that contains 10 food substances. These substances are tested with the finger-stick method for taking capillary samples thus making it easy to withdraw samples for intolerance examinations.

Doctor Attilio Speciani
Clinical Allergist and Immunologist

Italian version of this article available