So Confused...toddler Had Gluten Challenge No Reaction?!?

[mmcc54]

So our daughter was in the 95th percentile from birth till around 7ths when she started eating solids she started falling off the chart. She would eat TONS of food but wasn't gaining or growing in length at all! By her 1st birthday she was marked failure to thrive...even though she was nursing like crazy and eating more food then my 3 yr old. Her pedi did blood work her IgG came back positive for celiacs (anything over 4 is positive..hers was 16) we were sent to a pedi GI who did the biopsy which came back normal. We both went on a gluten-free diet in June last year...she started slowly growing and doing well her GI at her last apt advised doing a gluten challenge on her. Her only symptoms before was severe loose stools and a rash. We gave her some gluten Saturday morning...today is weds and still no reaction?!? She seems perfectly fine...so is it not celiacs??? What else would cause the high IgG levels?? Thank you in advanced for reading..i just don't know what to do, something was going on with my baby to cause her not to grow and thought for sure we finally figred out it was celiacs but now everyone including myself is doubting that

[NoGlutenCooties]

I'm no expert on kids and I know Celiac in young children can be even trickier than it is in adults... but my first thought is that she isn't old enough to have villi damage yet so it may take awhile (even months or years) for her to have any outward symptoms.  Being asymptomic even in adults is also not uncommon.  I had no symptoms at all myself but my biopsy showed moderate to severe villi damage.  If the IgG came back positive for Celiac, then your daughter has Celiac.  In my opinion, if you feed her gluten and wait for her to exhibit symptoms there could be an extensive amount of damage going on inside before you see any evidence of it from the outside.  (I would be particularly worried about this being that she's in the process of growing.)

 

If you aren't convinced that she has Celiac, you could do a full gluten challenge and keep her on daily gluten (i.e. a piece of bread every day) for 2 - 3 months and then redo the bloodwork - but I think you're risking causing unnecessary damage being that she already has a diagnosis.

[GottaSki]

Were the celiac antibodies run before you reintroduced gluten?  Had they come down?

 

If she is now growing, no longer has bowel issues nor rash and antibodies improved...why doubt the diagnosis?

 

Not sure which IgG was elevated, but do make sure they ran both tTG and DGP.

 

I would also make sure your GI has specific experience/training with diagnosing/treating Celiac Disease.

[nvsmom]

Not all celiacs react badly every time they have gluten - I don't. For some things like beer, I balloon up immediately and get pain and headaches. When I was accidentally consuming some wheat starch on fries over a few weeks, I slowly became ill, it was a pretty insidious start to symptoms that I didn't notice until I was ill for a while.  Sometimes I would get a stomach ache, and sometimes not, but when you've had a lot of stomach aches you learn to tough it out as it has become the norm - you could have a little toughie on your hands.

 

Also, the disease can wax and wane. I had some years that were worse than others, and some months or weeks that felt perfectly fine... It varies from person to person.