Serving Size For A Gluten Challenge?

[ryo]

we have to feed our daughter "one serving" of gluten for the next month.  any thoughts on what is a serving?  she will not eat bread so we have been giving her crackers.  trying to find the balance between helping her feel good and having the biopsy show damage

 

 

[kareng]

Open Original Shared Link

[ryo]

thank you for the link!  

 

does anyone have thoughts on the timeframe for waiting for the biopsy?  our daughter was only gluten-free for 2 weeks before they had us start her back on gluten.  our dr. is having us come back in 4 weeks for the biopsy but this link is stating 2 weeks.  

[greenbeanie]

How old is she? How long had she been eating gluten before the gluten-free period?

My daughter had essentially been gluten-light since birth/breastfeeding. We rarely bought bread at home, but she'd have daycare snacks with wheat cereal or pita bread a few times per week, plus a small amount of cackers on most days. So she was probably getting about one child-size serving of gluten per day, on average. Just after her fourth birthday she had strong positives to all three blood tests they ran (tTG-IgA and both DGP tests), and her biopsy showed mild villous atrophy. She'd pretty much had symptoms since birth (long before she ever had solids), though, so she may be an unusual case. We only did a 4-day strictly gluten-free trial before testing, but she was back to one serving per day for four weeks before her initial blood tests, and her biopsy was a week later.

There seems to be a lot of individual variability, especially for children, but it does seem like doing a longer gluten challenge is likely to decrease the number of false negatives. Even GI doctors seem to lack consensus about how long is necessary. So unless she's totally miserable, waiting four more weeks seems better than rushing it. Or, with a shorter challenge, having more than one serving of gluten per day might help make the biopsy accurate. Good luck!

[ryo]

thank you for all of your input.  my daughter is 5 years old.  she was on a full gluten diet until 3 weeks ago.  once her blood work came back we were told to take her off gluten (i knew better and should have listened to myself!).  she was gluten-free for 2 weeks before we went to the GI specialist.  they have asked us to put her back on gluten for 4 weeks before the biopsy.  i guess it is always a little up in the air for each dr. and i need to just learn to go with the flow a bit.  it is so hard to know that you are causing headaches, stomachaches, crazy mood swings, and everything else in your child  one week is down and we will just hope everything is clear on the 23rd.

[Mom-of-Two]

I can't speak to this exactly, we are on this journey with our younger kiddo, BUT I can tell you that my daughter had blood work while eating gluten, and was re- tested by a different GI after 2 weeks of gluten free at HOME. Her antibodies had already gone down by half. So, I do think in children, they do heal and reverse quite quickly!