10 Month Old - Testing Options?

[bridgetownmama]

I'm thinking of getting my son tested for Celiac - he's only 10 months old, so are there any good options? I've heard the blood test has a high false positive rate. And clearly he hasn't been eating gluten every day for a long period of time.

What sort of specialist treats patients with Celiac? My son has seen a pediatric gastroenterolgist before, because he had blood in his stool from age 10 weeks to 5 months, when we put him on Neocate. I did breastfeed up until then on a dairy, soy, wheat, egg free diet, which did not help. He is not still an active patient of the Ped GI, but I could probably still call him to make an appointment.

The reason I suspect Celiac is because my son's aunt and grandmother both show signs of it, probably with a long latent period during their young adulthoods. Son recently had wheat in the form of graham crackers, two days in a row. 24 hours later, he is pooping 10 times per day, pure mucus and whole foods. Today is the 4th day of that.

To add to confusion, though, he has had oats, oatmeal, and Cheerios (w/ wheat starch) since age 6 months, with absolutely NO issues whatsoever.

Any thoughts would be helpful. Some of this is a brain dump, but I'm particularly interested in testing details, usefulness, and specialist info. Thank you so much!

Beth

[CarlaB]

Beth, if he's been gluten-free, the conventional tests won't work. The testing by the way has a high false negative, not false positive. Personally, I wouldn't torture him with a four month gluten challenge to be able to do the conventional tests.

You can get him on the diet more strictly and use dietary response as your diagnostic tool.

Or you can use Enterolab. It's not widely accepted by MD's as a diagnosis because the Doctor who does the tests still hasn't published. You can also get genetic testing done through Enterolab to see what genes he has.

It's not the oats themselves that are a problem, it's the contamination of the oats that is a problem. Wheat starch theoretically is gluten-free, if you trust them to totally have removed the protein. So, it seems that if your son has it, he does not have strong reactions to small amounts of gluten. This does NOT mean that he does not get the damage from small amounts.

Welcome to the board! Feel free to ask whatever questions you mght have.