Blood Test Question

[Heartmum2Jamie]

Hi All!

I posted here once, just over a year ago asking about symptoms my son was having. We had a RAST test in Jan 2006 which showed he is allergic to dairy, eggs, nuts and surprisingly wheat. What we were told is that the wheat allergy was only very weakly positive and that we didn't have to cut it out. We decided to give it a try and things improved so much, that we decided to stick to his new diet. He went from having 6-10 horrid, mucousy diapers a day to just 1 or 2 and they lost the mucous and rotting smell. To this day, a year later, we can still tell if he has had any wheat.

Unfortunately, most of his stools are still unformed and his weight is still not brilliant (although he is the worlds pickiest eater and he is slightly food phobic. We have an appointment to see his paed on the 22nd and I was going to ask him to do a coeliac screening on him.

My question is: If ds has been on a wheat free diet for a year, will it affect the results. I know that wheat is a no-no for coeliacs, but am not sure what else there is that will contain gluten but not wheat, if you see what I mean.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Kerry

[jayhawkmom]

My question is: If ds has been on a wheat free diet for a year, will it affect the results. I know that wheat is a no-no for coeliacs, but am not sure what else there is that will contain gluten but not wheat, if you see what I mean.

Rye, Barley, and Oats are also nono's - so if he's been eating those and gluten is a problem, you could see results on blood tests. However, if he's had limited amounts of those foods, and no wheat - you might not see anything on the results.

Honestly... I don't know. I hope someone else can help you and give you more definitive answers.

[Guhlia]

If you really don't want to introduce wheat into his diet for the Celiac tests, try some of the following. Malted beverages, such as Goya contain barley. Oat-based cereals, specifically Quaker oatmeal definitely contains gluten. Rye bread and oat bread for sandwiches at lunch. Malted chocolate drinks and malted milk balls for snacks. Barley cereals and barley soups are good. Please keep in mind though that he may very well still test negative for Celiac. It's hard to get enough gluten in your diet without wheat. It's possible though.

You may want to look into testing through Enterolab. You insurance likely won't cover it, but it's only around $350 and then you don't have to have it on his health record. Enterolab isn't endorsed by most doctors, so your doctor likely won't support you in this decision. Even after a full year wheat free, he still has a good chance of testing accurately on Enterolab's test if he had a heavily wheat-laden diet prior to going wheat free.