Nutrition and skin diseases in veterinary medicine.

Veterinarians are confronted with a variety of food and nutrition-related skin diseases, with cutaneous food adverse reaction the most common in small animal dermatology. In addition to canine atopic dermatitis, cutaneous food adverse reaction has been an area of interest for extensive research for the last decade. Nutritional deficiencies and toxicoses are rare these days due to commercially available high-quality diets; however, poorly stored diets, inadequate husbandry of exotic pets, or problems in a farm animal environment may result in zinc, vitamin A, vitamin C, and fatty acid, or copper deficiency. Inherited deficiencies due to abnormal zinc absorption through the gastrointestinal tract must be considered in Nordic breed dogs and goats.