| Answer No. Acute allergies (IgE or Type 1 allergies) are when a person has a severe and usually very immediate reaction to food such as breathing difficulties, swelling of tongue, mouth, lips, eyes or throat, large itchy red lumps on the skin, continuous sneezing or watery, itchy eyes. These types of allergies usually develop in early childhood, are lifelong and often run in families. An allergy test looks for a very specific response to food – a high production of a particular chemical substance called histamine. The Novo Test diagnoses whether a food causes an inflammatory response in the body by looking at the level of white blood cells in response to a food. We do not test for histamine production in response to foods so we do not diagnose food allergies. Therefore, it is possible that an acute allergy may not be detected. |