Tissue Transglutaminase Autoantibody Detection in Saliva: Accurate Celiac Disease Screening Method

J Autoimmun. 2004 Feb;22(1):65-72
Celiac.com 01/29/2004 - A new cloning technique developed by Italian researchers may lead to more accurate diagnoses of celiac disease in borderline patients, including those who are asymptomatic. The technique screens for anti-tTG antibodies in the intestinal mucosa by utilizing a cloning process to amplify the antibodies, thus allowing for their detection even in cases where only minute amounts are present. The new technique is similar to that developed and long utilized by Dr. Kenneth Fine of Enterolab, in that both techniques look for the presence of antibodies in the intestinal mucosa rather than in the blood. The new technique also has the potential to easily screen large numbers of people, which, if the researchers are correct, will lead...

Celiac.com 12/12/2004 - A new study that was presented on November 1, 2004 by Julian Abrams, MD, and colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City at the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) 69th Annual Scientific Meeting indicates that using only antibody to tissue transglutaminase (tTG) to diagnose celiac disease will likely result in missed diagnoses—and the accuracy of the tTG results depends on which lab conducts the test. Many clinical studies during the past few years have indicated that tTG testing is as accurate as endomyosial antibody (EMA), which has caused many labs to use tTG rather than EMA, and even the recent National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference on Celiac Disease advocated the use of tTG over EMA.
In the study the r...

Pediatrics 2005;115:1341-1346.
Celiac.com 05/31/2005 – According to Canadian researchers, the use of Tissue Transglutaminase Antibody (tTG) Screening may soon replace the use of the small bowel biopsy to diagnose celiac disease in children. The researchers reviewed the charts of 103 children who were screened for celiac disease using both small bowel biopsy and tTG. Fifty-eight of the children were found to have positive biopsy results, and out of these, 48 had very high tTG levels (over 100 U), 7 had middle tTG levels (20-100 U), and 3 had low levels (less than 20 U). Out of the 49 children with the highest tTG levels, all but one of them had a positive biopsy result. There were 3 biopsy-positive children who had low tTG levels, two who were found to be IgA negative, and o...