Allergies are diagnosed by your history of symptoms and a physical examination, not testing alone. Reliance on mail-order blood testing for allergies is not good medical practice. It can lead to unneeded and possibly harmful and costly treatment.

Tests that are medically unproven for diagnosing allergies include: ¹

• Cytotoxic testing.
• Provocative-neutralization testing.
• Specific and nonspecific immunoglobulin (Ig) G4 testing.

Other tests that are not appropriate for diagnosing allergies include:

• Pulse test.
• Serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies test.
• Total serum immunoglobulin test.
• Lymphocyte subset counts, lymphocyte function assays.
• Cytokine and cytokine receptors or assays.
• Body chemical analysis.
• Food immune complex assay.