Mystery Blood Tests With High Iga & Igg

[bjshad]

Maybe someone can offer me some advice? Back in February, before celiac or gluten sensitivity was even a thought in my mind, my DD had some blood tests run and the tests came back with the following:

IgA - 205

IgG - 1368

DD's ENT ordered the tests and he told me he was checking her immune system function - she had the blood drawn on the same day she had a test for cystic fibrosis, and after the CF test came back negative, she had a biopsy of her windpipe for cillary dyskenesia, which also came back negative. When the blood tests came back, Dr. sent the report to the immunology dept. and the immunology Dr. called me and said that her levels were elevated, but that she was probably just fighting off an infection and didn't persue it any further.

Fast forward a few months and we are told by several of DD's naturopaths to take her off gluten because of leaky gut issues and she's on the autism spectrum, so it's a treatment for that as well. So I want more proof that she needs to be off gluten and ordered Enterolab's stool test. It comes back positive for IgA anti-gliadin antibodies! Her score was 62 on Enterolab's test and a negative would be <10. By the time she took Enterolab's test, we had been "gluten-lite" for about 1 month, with a couple of infractions at school. So I'm thinking back to this other blood test we had in February and I called and spoke with the nurse from the Dr. office to see what specifically they were testing for. The nurse said the lab report didn't say speficially, but the weren't total serum tests, because their lab reports will say if it's total serum and it didn't.

So, any idea what other things are routinely tested for with IgA and IgG blood tests? I'm going to order a copy of the lab report so I can see for myself, but any thoughts? The numbers seem pretty high to me, especially the IgG!

Thanks for any help or light you can shed on this.

Beth

[chrissy]

i'm still guessing that it is total serum levels----especially since the doctor was checking your daughter's immune system function. the nurse may not have had the correct info----we've all seen that happen. lol!! without knowing total serum levels, the IgA and IgG testing is useless, because, if a person is deficient in one of these areas, their tests will come back negative. my son is IgA deficient, so the original testing we did on him did not tell us anything. i THINK that if a person tested high on a particular antibody test, such as Ttg IgA, without a total IgA serum test, the chances of it being wrong would be alot less than the chances of a negative Ttg IgA (without a total IgA serum test) being wrong. hope that made sence.

[Rachel--24]

I was gonna say exactly what Chrissy said....I'm pretty sure it would be total serum levels and the nurse you spoke with might have been confused. If the Dr. was checking immune function he would most likely be checking the total serum levels.

[bjshad]

Thanks for the replies - that's kind of what I was thinking too. Especially since it didn't specify what exactly they would have been for, it would make sense that they were total serum levels and the nurse didn't know or didn't have all the information.

Beth