Please, Help Needed.....

[DVjorge]

Hi everybody,

I am new to this forum. First, I wish all you who have been affected with Celiac find the way to a good health. My case is this: I had a intestinal biopsia last week. The result isn't ready yet but I listened to my intestinal villi is atrophied. I have to see my dr in one more month. I don't know if what I have is Celiac yet. My question is Should I avoid gluten from my diet since now or it is good advice to keep it until more tests been run? I don't feel good, and I see food totally undigested in my stool. Thanks for any help.

George.

[MySuicidalTurtle]

Hello, welcome to the board!

If you are planning on having more tests then you need to eat gluten. If you go off, then the test may be wrong.

Good luck!

[GFinDC]

Hi George,

There are some antibody blood tests that don't work if you are off gluten for very long.. They are best done when you still on gluten. If you want to do those your doc just needs to draw some blood and send it to a lab for testing. There are some other conditions that can cause villi blunting, so the antibody tests are not a bad idea, just to be sure. The usual progression is the antibody tests first and then the endoscopy.

Then again, if you go off gluten now and you start feeling better, that is a pretty darn good test too! You just need to decide if the testing is important to you.

Dairy is another problem food for some celiacs, So you might be reacting to that also. Have you thought about eliminating dairy? Villi blunting impacts the production of lactase enzyme, which digests dairy sugar (lactose). You might feel a bit better getting off dairy if it is a problem.

One thing to check on is the biopsy. Some people have posted saying they had the biopsy done but the GI only took 1 sample and didn't find celiac. Most of the time people say a multi-sample biopsy from different areas is better. It seems the celiac damage is patchy sometimes and a sample from a good patch wouldn't show the effects. So multiple samples are more likely to work in that case. I suggest checking on this now, rather than waiting a month. If the GI didn't take multiple samples, they may not find anything. It sounds like you heard them say something about atrophy though?

I think it makes sense to talk to the doc and ask if you can go off gluten now. Maybe they already drew blood for the antibody tests?