When will itching stop if the allergen is eliminated?

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lucymay9701

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Hi everyone,

I'd be really grateful for some advice please as my poor girl is not having the best time at the moment. She started off being a little itchy a while ago and I put her on hyperdrug allergeze which seemed to help but she wasn't keen on the taste and eventually refused to eat it. The itching then got worse and she was covered in urtecaria. I phoned the vets and they advised a cool bath along with bute for a couple of days and then to change to piriton. The bute seemed to help but when she went on the piriton the itching was no better. I called the vets back and she was put on a course of steroid tablets to see if it would settle down but it continued to get worse and she started rubbing herself raw.

So the vet came out to visit and she had a dectomax injection along with blood tests taken and an increase in her steroid tablets. The itching started to improve and she has stopped rubbing herself raw now but is still very very itchy with some urtecaria. All her blood results (including allergy tests) came back normal. I'm not fully sure how accurate the allergy blood tests are though as sure she must have an allergy to something. She is now off the steroids and hasn't gone worse but isn't improving further either. I can tell she is so itchy and even though not rubbing herself raw anymore I am desperate for her to improve. So I am going to start eliminating things to see if I can find anything that could be contributing to it.

I wondered if anyone knew how long it would take after removing the allergen for the itching to improve? I was going to change her hard feed to chaff and sugarbeet only at first which would eliminate a few things. This would also eliminate molasses as she is on dengie hi-fi molasses free. If there is no improvement I will then move onto the next thing (which will probably be to try to replace the dengie hi fi molasses free as this has soya oil and alfalfa in it - both of which I know can be allergens). If anyone knew the type of time scales it would take to improve that would be really helpful as I'd then know when to move onto the next thing to try and narrow it down.

Thanks for any help
Lucy x
 
I am not clear if the reason for her itching has been established. All that has been prescribed would help to cut down the itching but will not have 'cured' her. Since my dogs have similar (annual) problems when they get harvest mite infestation, I know how distressing it can be - especially since the foreign harvest mites that we can get also transfer to humans! Their response is the same - itchy, progressing to rubbing raw and acute distress and then it subsides a bit with steroids. But it doesn't go away since the mites burrow under the skin and it is an allergic reaction to their saliva that causes the itch. It can be up to a week after killing off the mites that things start to subside. But you have to remove the cause ie mites or it just flares up again when the eggs hatch and the mites reappear. Its disgusting! So, has your vet done a skin scrape or used Scotch tape on an itchy patch to see what possible small beasties are there? There are ways to get rid of lice, and mites - seleen shampoo, deosect ( search Mites on this forum). But you say that your vet did allergy testing - do you mean the patch tests on the skin? They are a guide but I was told that they were not 100% accurate. Until you have a better idea of what is causing the itch you can do as you are trying with food. But personally I think a great many horse itch problems are responses to external things like midges, lice and mites rather than an internal thing in food. Food related allergies so often have a failure to thrive as well. Your vet really ought to find the cause so you can pick the cure rather than continue treating the symptoms
 
Hi, Thank you for your reply. She hasn't had any skin scrapings or scotch tape done but the vet thought she could see lice (although she has a fine coat and the vet said it was an unusual time of year for the lice). She was given the dectomax injection though to treat lice and I also read this would get rid of any mites but not sure if that is right? The allergy tests she had were the blood tests, but I am unsure if they are accurate as they came back negative. I was thinking maybe if it was to do with flies, midges etc that the change in weather would settle it down but she is still itchy. She is better than she was but not as good as I'd like her to be. I was thinking maybe if lice and mites were still there she would have continued rubbing herself raw but that has stopped and its just a general itchiness she has now - more enthusiastic than normal for a scratch and the odd patches of urticaria.
Thanks again, Lucy x
 
My vet said about six weeks and that turned out to be pretty accurate

As well as steroids my pony had a mix of aqueous cream, baytril and betnovate which he found very soothing on itchy spots so may be wirth asking your vet for - its very inexpensive

We have gone back to square one a couple of times for different reasons but caught it quick and the itching stopped after just a few days
 
Thanks very much for your reply I'll have a look at those things. I didn't realise it would take as long as 6 weeks for the allergen to get out of the system, so that's helpful to know, I was hoping it would only take a few days after removing something so if there was no improvement I could then remove something else but looks like it won't be that simple.
 
My horse suffered from Urticaria for a long time.

The vet suspected it was food based initially and we did complete food exclusion. We took him off all hard feed and then reintroduced items one at a time. That was how the vets advised. Take everything except hay out, if that doesn't work try haylage. Give it a few weeks to completely clear his system and let his immune system settle and then add one thing at a time. Avoid any mixes or cubes as you are adding too many things at once.

In his case it didn't work, even on just hay or haylage he was reacting so further investigation was needed. He went up to horsepital to have intradermal skin tests and turned out not to be food at all. I took him up the day before and all the lumps disappeared overnight. From this they concluded it wasn't food as anything he ate would be still have been in the gut so it must be environmental.

They did the skin tests and came up with 15 triggers, one was ryegrass but not from eating but from contact with it, so I swapped to haylage which helped. Another was lots of different types of wood and moving him onto straw not shavings helped. But the urticaria didn't completely go.

In the end moving yards made the biggest difference and the lumps went. I still had to be careful with some of the triggers but as his immune system returned to normal he stopped reacting.

The only thing that he reacts to these days some years later is shavings so I wonder if that was the initial trigger.
 
OP i'm not sure if six weeks is as long as it takes for the allergen to leave the system or how long it takes to break the habit - its hard to say but the vet was right in our case. Like i said on sudden onset of problems later down the line we managed to nip it in the bud but the initial problem was a long slog recovery

The vet said dont even think about putting a protective rug on in the early days when the itch is subsiding as the horse will still just trash it so another thing worth considering if you were going to go down that road

One thing that set my pony back was grass pellets surprisingly, i agree with the post above about adding or taking away from the diet one thing at a time
 
Hi, I have found that once you eradicate the allergen they respond in a few days. Allergies I've known include:-

Neoprene
Chicken mites
DEET
Saracen Equijewel (tail itch that stopped the day the feed was removed)
Insecticides
Metal (bits, stirrups)

Different horses, but all resolved once we worked out what the trigger is. Drugs just hide the issue, in the end you have to work it out for yourself.

Good luck and think outside the box.
 
Thanks very much for all the replies. I will give the elimination diet a try and see how we get on. The vet did say I could experiment with different anti-histamines aswell although said she doesn't find them very effective. I have read around a bit and it seems the cetrizine is the most effective in horses so I may try those temporarily aswell. Last year she was a bit itchy at the same time from mid-July to mid-September (but nothing like as bad as this year) so thinking it maybe some type of pollen that starts it off but maybe once the immune system is affected they start to become allergic to more things. The vet said the next thing they would do would be a skin biopsy. Does anyone know what this would be for? I've looked around and seen in articles that it does mention doing skin biopsies for allergies but can't find exactly what they look for. I think these are different to the intradermal skin testing which I'm assuming we would move onto after the biopsy if still not making progress. Interesting about the grass pellets as that was something I had thought maybe a good idea, although having said that she does have borderline cushings so I don't think they'd be good for her with that anyway? I've found a timothy chop from halleys feeds that I was thinking of trying as she hasn't been on any timothy grass during the time of the allergies so hopefully that would be OK. I just wondered if anyone had fed this and if they have if fussy feeders tend to like it as my horse can be fussy!?
Thanks,Lucy
 
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