Laboratory tests for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal disorders in dogs

Gastrointestinal disorders in dogs are often accompanied by various non-specific clinical signs. Laboratory tests are an important part of the medical workup as they help to establish an appropriate diagnosis and also provide important information about the clinical status of the patient. This article presents an overview about laboratory tests that are currently available for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal disorders in dogs. It also describes the physiologic basis for interpretation of the test results. Various laboratory tests for the evaluation of diseases of the stomach, intestine, liver, and pancreas are described. The main focus of this article are measurements of serum gastrin, pepsinogen, folate, cobalamin, C-reactive protein, bile acids, serum ammonium, pancreatic lipase immunoreactivity, and trypsin-like immunoreactivity concentrations, serum alanin-amino-transferase, aspartat-amino-tansferase, alkaline phosphatase, and -glutamyl-transferase activities, proteolytic fecal activity, fecal pancreatic elastase and alphal-proteinase inhibitor concentrations. Various PCR assays are also described.

Laboratory tests for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal disorders in dogs Academic Article