Elias Test?

[Terch]

It may be a silly question but what is all this Elias testing that people talk about. When I tried to look it up online it was all about HIV.

Thanks

[Rachel--24]

The ELISA testing that is talked about on this board is for food intolerances. Some labs offer ELISA IgG "delayed reaction" food sensitivity tests.

[burdee]

Actually the ELISA tests for IgE (immediate reaction) AND IgG (delayed reaction) food allergies. I took the ELISA test for over 100 different commonly eaten foods and learned I have egg and cane sugar allergies. I was not eating gluten, dairy or soy at the time, so those didn't show a reaction on the test results. That means you need to be eating whatever food the ELISA tests. If not, no reaction will show.

BURDEE

[AndreaB]

Burdee,

I was told by my allergy doctor that the ELISA test can pick up antibodies (if you're intolerant) for quite a while. I had not eaten any dairy for (not a speck) for at least 6 months and still tested positive to it. I had an IgE and IgG reaction. Both of which are true. The only time I may have had any dairy (for a 3 year period of time) is at potlucks where nothing else was available to eat.

You can also choose whether you pay the additional money for the IgE part of it. My kids were just tested by finger prick, which is only IgG. My husband had the blood draw, which is both.

My doctor uses US Biotek, who is out of Seattle.

[Rachel--24]

You dont have to be eating any of the foods that are in the test at the time of testing. The test may tell you you're sensitive to something you havent eaten in several years.

[Sara-UK]

I think this is basically how the Elisa test works -

(for food, or any other thing, such as HIV, that you may make antibodies against)

They coat the inside of a little well in a plastic plate with the thing you are testing against (e.g. cheese, HIV virus), then they put your blood (whole, or seperated out into different parts, I'm not sure) in the well for a while. If you have antibodies which are specific to the thing you coated the well with, the antibodies will bind to the food. then you wash all the rest of the blood and bits away, so you are left with a bit of food with the antibody stuck to it.

Antibodies have 2 main parts - the highly specific part which recognises one of thousands of diff antigens (e.g. a cheese antibody will have a diff specific part to a beef antibody). The other part is a common part. so all the different antibodies have this same common part.

This is exploited in the next step - here they put another antibody (a secondary antibody) into the well - I don't know where this antibody comes from, mainly from rabbits I think - and on the end of this antibody is an enzyme. So they put this antibody in, this antibody recognises the common bit of the first antibody - so in any wells where you have an antibody from your blood binding, this secondary antibody will also stick. Then they put a chemical into the wells - if the enzyme is present (indicating also the presecnce of the 2 other antibodies) the enzyme carries out its reaction and normally causes a colour change in the liquid in the well.

So, if you have antibodies against a certain food in a certain well, then that well will go for example pink, whilst all the other wells with things in that you don't react to, will not change colour.

So then, I'm guessing a machine, will scan across all the different wells in the plate (up tp 96 wells) and look for the different colours. then there will be cut offs, so if something is really really pink, they'll give that a certain score and say you react highly to it, something less pink will have a lower score etc, meaning you react less to that.

does that make sense, or has it just gone in circles?

Sara

[Terch]

Wow, thanks for the info, I think I am going to ask to be tested.