Poodles, Labradoodles and Portuguese Water Dogs: Cute, But Not As Hypoallergenic As Advertised, Study Finds
While the study admits it's not perfect and there are exceptions to the rule, some interesting things uncovered in this study.
You may now file hypoallergenic dogs under Things That Are Too Good to Be True. That's the conclusion of a new study by Henry Ford Hospital researchers, which finds that homes with so-called hypoallergenic dogs don't have lower household levels of allergens than those with other breeds.
Hypoallergenic dogs, which include purebreds like poodles and Portuguese water dogs, along with increasingly popular mixed breeds like labradoodles (the offspring of a Labrador retriever and a poodle), are thought to shed less fur and to produce less of the stuff that triggers allergies, such as dander and saliva. The price tag for these allergy-free pooches usually tops $2,000, but the new study suggests your money may be misspent if you're buying them in hopes of avoiding allergy attacks.
"We found no scientific basis to the claim hypoallergenic dogs have less allergen," said Christine Cole Johnson, chair of Henry Ford Hospital's department of public health sciences and senior author of the study, in a statement.
Although some previous research has suggested that exposure to dogs during infancy may help prevent children's development of allergies later, "the idea that you can buy a certain breed of dog and think it will cause less allergy problems for a person already dog-allergic is not borne out by our study," Johnson said.
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