A York laboratory's claims that its food intolerance tests can help many people's health were boosted today when the results of an independent audit were published. MIKE LAYCOCK spoke to a York mother who says the tests have transformed the health of both her and her son

IT WASN'T long after Cameron Burdass was born in 1999 that his mother Karen knew something was wrong with his skin. "It was extremely dry. It was like sandpaper," said Karen, 33, of Shipton Road, York, who was bottle-feeding Cameron using dairy milk formula. She went to the doctor who diagnosed eczema, and prescribed a steroid cream, but Karen preferred not to use it.

When she started weaning Cameron on to "mushy" food such as wheat-based rusks, his health deteriorated further - and it wasn't just eczema any more.

She said: "He had been quite happy as a tiny baby but he became a terrible sleeper. He was really restless, tossing and turning for hours. It went on for months and months." The sleep disruption left Karen exhausted: "I was so tired."

But Cameron was out-of-sorts during the day as well. "He didn't look well. He had a permanently runny nose. And we had to keep changing his nappy - six times before lunchtime."

Cameron couldn't tell his mum what was wrong, but she was convinced he was suffering from digestive problems. This hunch was confirmed by chance when Cameron was ten months old, and went down with a stomach bug. He ate nothing for a week, drinking only water.

The effects were dramatic. "He was a different child," said Karen. "The eczema was starting to clear up and his nose stopped running."

Then she remembered reading in the Evening Press how someone else's health had improved after sending a blood sample to the York Nutritional Laboratory to have it tested for food intolerance.

She inquired and was relieved to find she only need send a pin-prick sample of blood in the post to the laboratory. She said: "I thought I might have to take him somewhere to get tested."

The price was more of a shock. Karen was left with a £200 bill for an extensive set of tests, checking for a range of different foods that could be causing her baby son's digestive problems.

Karen says she was fortunate in being able to afford the test and now believes her money was well spent.

The test showed a severe reaction to dairy milk and nuts - although not to such an extent that Cameron would ever suffer anaphylactic shock and then need to be rushed to hospital. There was a lesser but still significant reaction to wheat and oats.

Karen says that without the tests, it would have been very hard if not impossible to work out which foods were causing the problems.

Armed with the test results, Karen started to change Cameron's diet. She tried goat's milk, but that was no better than dairy, and she eventually settled on sheep milk and soya milk.

Many breakfast cereals were ruled out - but not all. "There's Rice Krispies and there are others."

The biggest problem was the removal of bread, that great staple of the British diet. Karen says she has now become a great reader of labels while going round the supermarket, having to avoid even ingredients such as wheat-based starches.

Cameron's condition improved dramatically over the weeks. His eczema almost completely disappeared. "And he looked well. He just became a happy child. People commented on it who didn't know about what had happened. He wasn't troubled in his sleep any more."

Karen says the eczema was 95 per cent better but after a visit to a homeopath, the complaint disappeared altogether.

Final confirmation that the dietary change was responsible for the improvements came just before Christmas, when Cameron went to a series of parties and Karen let his diet slip. "Within 24 hours, his eczema started to come back on the backs of his legs."

She put him back on the diet, and the problem disappeared again.

Karen herself had suffered problems such as sore throats and irritable bowel syndrome for years and so, when she sent off a sample of Cameron's blood, she decided to get herself tested as well.

The test showed a bad reaction to dairy milk and also yeast. So she joined Cameron in drinking sheep's milk and her own condition also improved dramatically.

Today's report by York University's Department of Health Studies revealed that Karen is not alone in feeling that the laboratory's tests have improved her health. More than half the lab's customers reported significant improvements in their symptoms after changing their diets once the tests had indicated intolerance to particular foods.

Karen is aware that not everyone could afford the cost of having themselves or their children tested privately. She says that she would like NHS doctors to take more account of the possibility of food intolerance when patients report problems such as eczema and irritable bowel syndrome, and to send off samples on patients' behalf for testing.