Read This If You Are Thinking Of Testing

[CMCM]

I've been trying to find out about testing, which way to go, and how to get the most "bang for my buck" in this whole thing. I've contacted Enterolabs a couple of times with my concerns....specifically about testing given the fact that I have been gluten free for 2 weeks now, the apparent unreliability of blood testing to reveal the presence of celiac, and so on. I just got an email which explains several things I've seen discussed back and forth on these forums, so I'm posting it below for all of you to read. Given what they say, I have pretty much decided to do their complete test, which I think will save $$$ in the long run. One concern I had was the blood work, which must be pretty costly. And then if it shows nothing, and you do the stool testing, that's even more money. Here's the reply:

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I understand your concern regarding our tests since, as you pointed out, they are not widely accepted by the general medical community as yet. We are hoping that this will change after Dr. Fine publishes his newest study next year with analysis of EnteroLab's results over the last 5 years. This is what many physicians say they are waiting on before they begin recommending our tests to their patients.

The reason your 2 week elimination of gluten would affect blood tests and not our stool tests is because it takes much longer for antibodies to reach the blood than the stool. Since the antibodies are produced in the intestine, where the stool is also located, antibodies are found in this medium quite readily. By the time the antibodies are detected in blood samples, intestinal damage has usually already occurred. Of course, then physicians will order a biopsy which may or may not be positive, depending on whether or not they take the sample from the right area of the intestine, and patients are often given a false negative result and are told to continue eating gluten. Believe me, I have heard this story many, many times, and these patients are never correctly diagnosed until they receive our results.

If you are not eating gluten when the blood sample is taken, the antibodies do not stay in the blood very long. It is not their natural medium. Our tests, however, can detect antibodies in the stool for up to 1-2 years after elimination of gluten from the diet. This has been substantiated in Dr. Fine's research of several years.

We also, purposely keep our prices as low as possible so that more people can afford to test. You get better results with our gluten sensitivity stool and gene panel complete than you do when your physician has you do blood testing, gene testing and a biopsy to determine the same thing. A biopsy alone could cost as much as $2000, and I had a patient recently tell me they spent $500 on blood tests before ordering our tests. I do not believe you need to have blood testing done in addition to our tests, only because they are not as conclusive.

I do not mean to sound like a sales person, but I do believe wholeheartedly in the quality of our tests, and I believe they are much more helpful for diagnostic purposes than the alternatives. I also know from personal experience with one of my own family members that our tests diagnosed her condition when the "gold standard" blood tests did not.