Blood Work Interpretation

[GeorgeDaniel]

Can you please help me with interpreting this result. I have been gluten-free for 1 year and 10 months prior commencing a gluten challenge which lasted only 2 months and 10 days. My symptoms were so severe that I couldn't make it to complete the necessary three months. 

 

Here's my results.

 

ht TTG IgG - 8.9U/mL       pos >10 

ht TTG IgG - 2.5U/mL       pos >10 

Serum IgA 144                  Ref 57-317

 

I have almost all symptoms including teeth enamel loss and hair thinning aside from severe digestive pain and constipation. I also am diagnosed with PROCTITIS (they say there is a relation between proctitis and celiac).

 

Anyone who can shed light please? Thanks! More power everyone! 

[nora-n]

I think you have a typo, one of those is Ttg IgA

 

Maybe you should have had the DGP test as well

 

One of the tests is almost positive, so if you can get a biopsy done maybe go for it

[GeorgeDaniel]

I think you have a typo, one of those is Ttg IgA

 

Maybe you should have had the DGP test as well

 

One of the tests is almost positive, so if you can get a biopsy done maybe go for it

Yes sorry! The bottom one is. Ms Nora is it already high you think this value of 8.9 for ht TTG IgG? I mean what sort of values does it show on tests? above ten? above 20? Thank you for replying!  

[nora-n]

positive is above 10, and yours was almost there.

 

Now the antibodies are locally in the intestines, and only the surplus ends up in the blood where it can be tested. Also, how much shows up in the blood varies from person to person.  The intestinal damage does not really correlate with the blood work numbers.

[nvsmom]

The tTG IgG has a really low sensitivity, it misses over 50% of celiacs as seen in this article:  Open Original Shared Link[tt_news]=172034  When it is positive though, it has a high specificity - meaning a positive is caused by celiac disease.  Your is awfully close so I would guess that something is up.  

 

I agree with Nora that more testing could be helpful.  Some people only get positives in the DGP tests and not the tTG tests.  Doing the DGP IgA and DGP IgG might give you an answer. The biopsy can diagnose those with negative blood work, but that's not a perfect test either as it can miss as many as 1 in 5 celiacs.

 

You definitely have a problem with gluten.  You may be one of those celiacs who tests serologically negative, or you could have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), which has all the same possible symptoms as celiac disease except for intestinal villi damage and the dh rash. It is also much more common that celiac disease (6-10% of people - approximately).  In the end, I think you should probably go back on the gluten-free diet regardless of what the test results are.

 

Good luck with whatever you decide to do