Pre Enterolab Questions

[Guest wanaenjoylife]

I am about to order the enterolab panel for celiac and was wondering if i need to be eating gluten to get accurate results. If so, for how long before hand? thanks!

[CarlaB]

Enterolab can only tell you whether you are having an immune reaction to gluten. It cannot tell you whether it's celiac.

You do not need to be gluten-free for the test.

Have you had the celiac blood test? If you're still eating gluten, I'd opt for that one over the Enterolab test. Enterolab is good when someone is already gluten-free. If I were still eating gluten, I'd do the blood test.

[Guest wanaenjoylife]

Enterolab can only tell you whether you are having an immune reaction to gluten. It cannot tell you whether it's celiac.

You do not need to be gluten-free for the test.

Have you had the celiac blood test? If you're still eating gluten, I'd opt for that one over the Enterolab test. Enterolab is good when someone is already gluten-free. If I were still eating gluten, I'd do the blood test.

im gluten free, but i have only been really truly gluten-free for a few days. (things keep sneaking up on me) I did have blood and they came back negative, but i was gluten-free (kinda) at the time. my dr only did one out of the whole panel tho, so i dont know. i think im going to do enterolab. thank you!

[CMCM]

My doctor knew so little that he wrote "celiac panel" on the lab order. The lab called to find out which specific tests....he in turn called ME (!!!!) to find out which ones. At the time, I didn't know what to answer, and the result was that I believe the blood test I had was incomplete....which could explain why it was negative. However, at the time, while I was eating limited gluten here and there, I was not eating much. That, too, could account for the negative result. I have read that for results to show on the blood test, you have to have a substantial amount of intestinal damage. Lesser amounts of damage might not show up yet on a blood test....simply not enough damage for the antibodies to leak into the blood.

Ultimately, with the blood test, you either have to be eating and have to have been eating LARGE amounts of gluten over a lengthy period of time and therefore you have to have inflicted a LOT of damage on your intestines in order for the blood test to show positive. To me, that's kind of like saying "Well, your arm might be cracked and ready to break, but let's really break good it so it will show up on the x-ray so we can say definitely you have a broken bone." <_<

For this reason, I think the Enterolab tests are more useful since the stool can apparently detect antibodies up to a year after your last gluten meal. AND...the stool test can detect antibodies when there may not be appreciable intestinal damage yet.

I asked Enterolab why my malabsorption test was normal if I had the gene and if I showed antibodies. The reply was that either my minimal gluten eating over a year or two had allowed any malapsoption to reverse itself, OR....that true celiac disease simply had not been triggered and I was at that point merely having antibody reactions without any major damage. No way of knowing, in the end. I'm certainly not going to gobble down tons of gluten to create damage just so it can be observed by some relatively unknowledgeable person in the medical profession! My mom had celiac disease, but she hasn't eaten gluten for 40+ years. If she had a test today, if she had a biopsy, they would tell her she doesn't have celiac disease now!!!!

im gluten free, but i have only been really truly gluten-free for a few days. (things keep sneaking up on me) I did have blood and they came back negative, but i was gluten-free (kinda) at the time. my dr only did one out of the whole panel tho, so i dont know. i think im going to do enterolab. thank you!