Weak Positive

[Madk09]

So I’ve been having stomach problems lately, lots of gas, bloating, some nausea, and stomach pain. Also I’ve been taking medication for the past year for acid reflux as I’ve had it daily, it worked at first and then I started having acid reflux again so my GP increased my dose and sent me to a GI at my request. Seeing as I’m also anemic and deficient in Vitamin D, have raised liver enzymes (presumably from non-alcoholic fatty liver), and Sjogren’s (an autoimmune disease), the GI said she wants to do both a endoscopy and colonoscopy to rule out any bleeds and to check everything out. She also ordered blood tests to look for Celiac, IGA (came back normal) and the tTg, which came back 8 which is a weak positive, negative being <4. I have my scopes scheduled for the end of June, my question is should I be worried? How many people with weak positive results are actually diagnosed with Celiac? I’m assuming I should maybe try to eat gluten heavy leading up to the scope so that the result is the most accurate, right? Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated, I’m so worried about getting this diagnosis as my Sjogren’s has already severely changed my taste buds and ruined so many foods for me, they just taste horrible now. I feel like cutting out gluten is going to be extremely hard. 

[trents]

Welcome to the forum community @Madk09!

Many people are diagnosed with weak positives on the celiac antibody tests.

Was the IGA test you speak of the "total IGA" test to check for IGA deficiency? IGA deficiency can lower values in the tTG-IGA test and even cause false negatives. IGA deficient people should also have other tests run such as the DGP-IGA and the DGP-IGG. But if you are a weak positive for the tTG-IGA antibody test then that suggests you have celiac disease. Anemia can also drive down tTG-IGA scores. Yes, you should be eating heavy amounts of gluten daily up to the day of the scoping. They should be taking biopsies of your small bowel lining when they do the scoping in order to check for damage to the small bowel lining. Eat the gluten equivalent of about 5 slices of bread daily.

[Madk09]

Thanks for replying @trents I believe the IGA test was the total IGA. It says IGA BLD on my test results and the normal ranges are 70-400, mine came back as 274, so it was within the normal range. I’ve known for quite a while that something has been wrong with me, it’s just not normal to feel so sick after eating. It would be nice to finally have some answers. I had no idea anemia could lower the tTG-IGA so thanks for that information! I will try my best to eat a lot of gluten at least two weeks prior to having the scope. I’m assuming the GI will want to do the biopsy to confirm but I’ll make sure on that as well. Thanks again!