Blood Test For Celiac

[StormyWen]

My three year old has had GI problems as long as I can remember. We started food allergy testing about 4 months ago and have eliminated numerous things from his diet. We know for sure he has a problem with dairy because if he gets into any his diarrhea comes back. We also know that he has a problem with wheat because we tried adding that back into his diet a couple of weeks ago and he had stomach aches and green diarrhea/loose stools for over a week. We had blood drawn for a number of different tests, one of them was for celiac. The problem is, at the time of the test my son had been off gluten for about a month. So his pediatrician said he doesn't have Celiac. Here's my questions:

1) Would that test be accurate since he wasn't consuming gluten?

2) How much gluten do you have to be consuming when you have the test done?

3) For those of you with Celiac, how much ingested gluten will cause you to have a reaction? My son seems to react after stealing a handful of cereal.

Thank you,

Wendy

[CarolynM]

My opinion-

1. No, doubt it was accurate.

2. Answers vary -

3. This varies for individuals but for many definitely enough gluten in handful of cereal to cause a reaction.

If you have seen improvement with the gluten-free diet, I would stick with it. Your son may be gluten sensitive or intolerant (not quite sure the difference myself) but not have intestinal damage or not have it yet which means most docs will not diagnose as celiac disease.