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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The IgA panel should be sufficient for an initial test (and results generally come back quickly.) That's what the Drs ran on both my children and myself, and there's some discussion in the literature about accepting a sufficiently raised IgA result without the need for further testing, although at present the endoscopy remains the standard for an 'official' diagnosis.

FWIW, in our case my eldest came back positive on her panel and had a subsequent endoscopy to confirm celiac, my other child and I both came back negative. Although my younger child's IgA was just below the lower bound for normal amounts, the Drs felt it was still sufficiently high enough to trust the negative IgA results (it was detectable, just *slightly* below the normal range).  And I trusted that result as neither of us were experiencing symptoms - I just wanted to get the rest of us tested while still on a gluten-filled diet since we moved our whole house GF with my eldest's diagnosis.[/quote]

Sorry to be dumb, but is the "IgA panel" you mention as sufficient for the initial test the same as the screening transglutaminasa (IgA) I am being told is the initial test?

And, should I continue to be on gluten while awaiting the results of the test? [/quote]

Here's a link on the celiac panel: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/testcenter/testguide.action?dc=TH_CeliacPanel

As far as I know the big deal here is to test for the tTG IgA aantibodies *and* total IgA just to make sure that if you don't have the celiac specific antibodies it's not because you're IgA deficient.

In terms of staying on gluten after the blood test, you should be fine to stop eating it.  Your blood stream will clear the antibodies relatively quickly (which is why you need to be eating it for the blood test), but it takes a while for the intestines to heal the damage (they say 6 months, but I think they actually truly heal in only like 50% of diagnosed adults), so should the IgA come back positive and you need an endoscopy, a few days/weeks without gluten likely wouldn't heal your intestines enough to get a 'false' negative by endoscopy.  I know our Ped GI cleared us to put our daughter on a GF diet prior to the endoscopy for exactly that reason - she understood that I didn't want to wait longer than necessary to do something to help my child.  And I think we got in for the endoscopy 3 weeks post bloodwork?

Should you need an endoscopy I'll also add that you sometimes need to wait for the pathology report to know for sure.  Probably since our daughter was young the damage wasn't visible to the naked eye, and the report from the Dr was that things looked normal, but in pathology they could see the classic signs of villious atrophy that signaled celiac.[/quote]

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