Is My Daughter "gluten Intolerant" Enough To Require Diet?

[SoMuchPaint]

Recently my kindergarten daughter and I were tested with Enterolab. I am unsure if she needs to be on a STRICT gluten-free diet, or if the occasional cupcake at school or slice of delivery pizza at a party are not really worth the fuss. I think I know the answer already, but am meeting with confusion among the other adults in our family as to how "controlling" I will need to be of her diet, and how much of it can be left to her own paying attention to how she feels, especially as she does not have the most common Celiac genes.

Here are her results:

Fecal Anti-gliadin IgA: 69 Units

Fecal Anti-tissue Transglutaminase IgA: 24 Units

Quantitative Microscopic Fecal Fat Score: Less than 300 Units

Fecal Anti-casein (cow's milk) IgA: 6 Units

HLA-DQB1 Molecular analysis, Allele 1: 0303

HLA-DQB1 Molecular analysis, Allele 2: 0501

Serologic equivalent: HLA-DQ 3,1 (Subtype 9,5)

Thank you so much for any insight you can give!

[SoMuchPaint]

Did I post my question in the wrong place?

[sunnybabi1986]

Hi!

If your daughter's testing showed 10 units or more of Fecal Anti-gliadin IgA or Fecal Anti-tissue Transglutaminase IgA, then your daughter is having a reaction to gluten and does need to be on a strict gluten free diet. Even occasional or small amounts of gluten will create a reaction in her body. If she came back with 69 and 24 units, she is definitely gluten sensitive. No question about it. She needs to be gluten free. 100% gluten free. If she has an occasional cupcake or piece of pizza, her body will have to begin the healing process all over again.

My scores were exactly 10 units and I decided to go gluten free, even though 10 units is on the low end scale of gluten sensitivity. I have been gluten free for 5 weeks now and have seen dramatic results in my digestion and overall health. I'm not 100% better yet, that can take months to achieve based on how much damage is in the intestines.

By the way, there are several yummy gluten free cake mixes out there, and you can make her some cupcakes out of them when there is a party at school. Betty Crocker has come out with a good gluten free yellow and devil's food cake mix.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Janie

[SoMuchPaint]

Hi!

If your daughter's testing showed 10 units or more of Fecal Anti-gliadin IgA or Fecal Anti-tissue Transglutaminase IgA, then your daughter is having a reaction to gluten and does need to be on a strict gluten free diet. Even occasional or small amounts of gluten will create a reaction in her body. If she came back with 69 and 24 units, she is definitely gluten sensitive. No question about it. She needs to be gluten free. 100% gluten free. If she has an occasional cupcake or piece of pizza, her body will have to begin the healing process all over again.

My scores were exactly 10 units and I decided to go gluten free, even though 10 units is on the low end scale of gluten sensitivity. I have been gluten free for 5 weeks now and have seen dramatic results in my digestion and overall health. I'm not 100% better yet, that can take months to achieve based on how much damage is in the intestines.

By the way, there are several yummy gluten free cake mixes out there, and you can make her some cupcakes out of them when there is a party at school. Betty Crocker has come out with a good gluten free yellow and devil's food cake mix.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Janie

Thank you so much. I wasn't sure just HOW bad the 69 and 24 units are (beyond being a positive test result), but I was thinking that ANY level of autoimmune activity was bad enough to be taken seriously.

Does producing antibodies to gluten mean you technically have an allergy to gluten?

[mushroom]

Does producing antibodies to gluten mean you technically have an allergy to gluten?

No, this is an autoimmune response. There is a difference between that and an allergy (an IgE response).

[sunnybabi1986]

Thank you so much. I wasn't sure just HOW bad the 69 and 24 units are (beyond being a positive test result), but I was thinking that ANY level of autoimmune activity was bad enough to be taken seriously.

Does producing antibodies to gluten mean you technically have an allergy to gluten?

I'm not an expert yet on this, but mushroom explained it's an autoimmune response, which in my understanding, is more complex than an allergy. I still have to figure all this out myself, but that's my understanding.

According to Enterolab's site, the number of units of IgA you have really doesn't tell you anything about the severity of what's going on inside your intestines. Some people with lower numbers are sicker than those with higher numbers. Another user on these forums told me that she came back with low units of IgA from Enterolab, but had confirmed intestinal damage with an endoscopy.

Does your daughter have any symptoms? If she does, it would be a good way to explain to relatives that the only way that she will get and stay better is to steer clear of gluten strictly. She doesn't have Celiac, as she doesn't carry the genes, but a gluten sensitivity can make you pretty sick and unhealthy if not treated. Let us know how things go!

Janie

[SoMuchPaint]

Does your daughter have any symptoms? If she does, it would be a good way to explain to relatives that the only way that she will get and stay better is to steer clear of gluten strictly. She doesn't have Celiac, as she doesn't carry the genes, but a gluten sensitivity can make you pretty sick and unhealthy if not treated. Let us know how things go!

Janie

My daughter isn't much of a complainer, but if you ask her how she is feeling, she will often mention that her stomach hurts, as do the joints in her hands and her knees. The joints in her middle fingers actually lock up -- if she closes her hand slowly, the middle finger seems stuck straight and then jumps into a bent position with a quiet click sound. She has had dark bags under her eyes for more than two years.

We looked back at family photos, and the darkness first shows in family photos taken a few months after my grandmother's death. She was really close to my grandmother, who was legally blind and lived with us, and her death, from a fall down the stairs while on vacation with us, was sudden and traumatic. I wonder if that event was a trigger. I seem to remember her being a very healthy baby and toddler, but she had cyclic fevers in preschool (never diagnosed; she started preschool a month after my grandmother's death), and seems to catch everything in Kindergarten this year.

I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis (diagnosed when she was 12 months old, probably related to pregnancy) and what was probably rheumatoid arthritis (which started from a badly placed IV line when in labor with my second child), which I treated by eliminating corn and corn products from my diet and undergoing acupressure treatments for about a year. It was really bad, to the point that I was dropping anything I tried to pick up with my right hand, was starting to have trouble using my left hand as well, and was developing stiffness and pain in my left knee. Now my knees are perfectly fine, my hands are mostly pain free, and I get noticeable stiffness and pain in my hands after consuming corn products, like frosting, which is made of powdered sugar (has corn starch). This was before I recently went gluten free myself.

I sincerely hope that a gluten-free diet (which she seems to be readily accepting, perhaps because we are doing it together) will make her asymptomatic, but the stiffness in her hands is making me look suspiciously at corn for her as well. I'd hate to further limit her diet, though, without some sort of proof.

Enterolab doesn't seem to test for corn sensitivity. Does anyone?