ttg iga weak positive?

[DanilClent]

Celiac disease is not well known in my country, and doctors would often brush off when I mention gluten/celiac. I've been having gastro issues since childhood and recently got little bad. After my mother mentioned one of my relatives can't eat any flour product as she would get upset stomach and I started to research and found about celiac. I largely avoided gluten to see if I might have Celiac, but symptoms did not improve until I stopped eating oats, and later read somewhere that some people with celiac have trouble eating oats. My symptoms were consistent with celiac disease and since two years my weight has been declining.

I talked with my GI but he insists on doing a colonoscopy and if nothing is found he'd consider a endoscopy. I've been largely avoiding gluten for like 5 months and decided to do a ttg iga test. I started eating gluten (like a piece of cake) for two weeks, and I missed gluten on two days or so. I read somewhere that the antibody has a half life of six months so I thought even if I were largely avoiding gluten if I had celiac the test would be positive.

My results came back as 17 RU/ml (I guess it is same as U/ml because =>20 was marked as positive in the report) and I thought it was negative, but my brother did some research and said that it is a weak positive and I should do another test after a proper gluten challenge.

I'm a little hesitant to do an endoscopy after results came back as negative because my country is in the brink of an economic collapse and it would be a waste of money.

Am I stupid? Do I need to take another test to maybe confirm after a gluten challenge?

[trents]

Welcome to the forum, DanilClent!

The Mayo Clinic guidelines for a pretest gluten challenge are as follows:

For the serum antibody test: Daily consumption of two slices of wheat bread (or the equivalent) for 6-8 weeks leading up to the day of testing.

For the endoscopy/biopsy: Same amount of gluten as for the serum antibody test but for only two weeks up to the day of testing.

I feel that your test scores were lower than they might of been because your consumption of gluten was not meeting the guidelines.

[Wheatwacked]

3 hours ago, DanilClent said:

Am I stupid?

No.  Celiac Disease is a disease of malnutrition. Doctors learn to treat diseases but almost nothing about the vitamins and minerals which we need to convert food to life energy. 

One example: "Choline has received considerable attention due to its inverse association with adverse health outcomes that can occur across the life cycle, including birth defects, neurodevelopment and cognition alterations, hepatic steatosis, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer"    Dietary Choline Intake: Current State of Knowledge Across the Life Cycle

Could we be overlooking a potential choline crisis in the United Kingdom?

VitaminRDA