At the risk of being hit in the head by flying objects
, I finally had a chance to go over the paper that Dr. Dodds sent to Gemy with a fine tooth comb.
As a review article, it is rather frustrating, because
most of the references she cites to prove a point have little to do with the point that she is making. There are a few exceptions, and I was able to find this gem amongst the gravel:
The canine model of dietary hypersensitivity, by Michael J. Day. 2005. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 64:458-464.
This article describes the concept of food insensitivity and intolerance in terms that align very well with the way Dr. Dodds describes it. It's behind a paywall (of course), but you should be able to read the abstract here:
Cambridge Journals Online - Proceedings of the Nutrition Society - Abstract - The canine model of dietary hypersensitivity
Well, that's the good news. The bad news is that Dr. Dodds' references to salivary testing for food sensitivity and intolerance point mainly to her unpublished data presented at AHVMA conferences, or to her Canine Nutrigenomics book. She does provide references to salivary antibodies in humans, but those are mostly related to responses to bacterial antigens. There has been very little published on salivary antibodies as related to food insensitivity. Serum (from blood) antibodies yes, but saliva no.
Dr. Dodds provides photos of two food intolerant dogs before and after removing the offending food from their diet, presumably diagnosed using Nutriscan, but that's only two data points. She doesn't give any numbers or percentages on how many dogs improved after their diets were changed based on the test.
Dr. Dodds also provides two tables of data, but they only indicate the numbers of dogs that showed various food insensitivities according to the Nutriscan test. It doesn't say how many improved after their diet was changed.
Overall, I am left better informed about the concept of food intolerance and the leaky gut syndrome, which I believe to be real, but
there is no proof that the Nutriscan test works, or that it measures anything that is biologically meaningful in food intolerant dogs. Dr. Dodds still needs to publish peer-reviewed data on the number and percentage of dogs that improved once their diets were changed in accordance with the results of Nutriscan testing.