Diet trials for nonseasonal pruritus

In this video discussing her lecture Food for Thought: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Diets for Derm Cases, Joya Griffin, DVM, DACVD, practicing dermatologist with the Animal Dermatology Group in Louisville, Kentucky, and star of the National Geographic Wild television series Pop Goes the Vet with Dr Joya, talks about the importance of conducting diagnostic diet trials for cats and dogs with nonseasonal pruritus. Patients with year-round pruritus, as well as young patients with pruritus can also undergo diet trials. With this diagnostic method, Griffin explains, the objective is to replace the patient’s current food with a novel protein prescription diet to observe changes in itching over 6 to 8 weeks.

Below is the interview transcript:

Joya Griffin, DVM, DACVD: So whenever a dog comes in to me, or cat that has a non-seasonal onset of pruritus, or they're itching all year round without seasonality, it's really important for me to do a diagnostic diet trial. I also choose diagnostic diet trials for cases that start having pruritus really young, and my goal is to get them completely off of their current food and put them on a new, novel protein prescription diet, so that we can see what happens over the span of 6 to 8 weeks with their pruritus level. Does that go away with the change in the food, or does it continue throughout that diet trial? So I use it as a diagnostic test, and at the end of the diet trial, we always want to rechallenge with the old food to confirm that the improvement was related to the diet and that the dog does in fact, flare once they're re-fed the old food.

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