Hinduja Hospital, one of the oldest tertiary care hospitals in Mumbai, is the first hospital lab in the city to start food intolerance test called 'Genarrayt'. This unique test is based on Microarray technology. With the introduction of this sensitive technology, it is now possible to diagnose food intolerance to 221 specific foods in patients presenting with various symptoms from general lethary, weight gain, dermatitis, arthritis to irritable bowel syndrome. The technology originally invented for studying DNA and gene expression is now being exploited to practical diagnostic tests for early detection of food intolerances by measuring food specific IgG levels in blood.
Announcing the launch of the test, Dr Vipla Puri, head-Radio Immuno Assay (RIA), Hinduja Hospital said, "Food intolerance is an exaggerated or abnormal physical reaction to a food or food additive caused by some chemical or enzyme deficiency in the body. Several factors may cause a person to have an adverse reaction to food. With the launch of Genarrayt, Hinduja Hospital will now be able to find out exactly what is the foodstuff that your system cannot tolerate. We can now assay 64 samples in less than two hours. Bringing innovation at Hinduja Hospital, we can now diagnose food intolerance to 221 specific foods in patients."
Many people exhibit chronic food sensitivity. IgG mediated food sensitivity reactions take several days to appear; symptoms include general lethargy, weight gain, dermatitis arthritis and tiredness. The treatment for food intolerance is cutting down the offending food from one's diet. The challenge is to identify the offending food. Level of IgG is an indicator and monitoring these levels can help. Controlled removal of the suspect foods from the patient's diet will in many cases rapidly improve the patient's condition. The Genarrayt food IgG assay is straightforward and the entire assay takes only two hours to complete one to four slides containing 16-64 patient samples. Also, the sample volume required for the test is 5µl only. These factors make the test less invasive, accurate and rapid.
In a country like India which has such a diverse gene pool of population and lack of awareness, it is the need of the hour that such test should be easily available to the masses.