Son's Test Results

[parker313]

My son has been complaining about stomach pain off and on through the winter, and increasingly over the past month or so. He's 7, so at first I thought that he had just realized he could say his stomach hurt and I'd come get him from school

He has a few other symptoms, most notably occasional diarrhea, easy to tire, "allergy shiners" and inability to settle himself down when he gets wound up. My mom and I both have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and I just found out my father's sister is Celiac.

I took him to the Dr and the Dr ordered a stomach x-ray, CBC, food allergy panel and a Celiac test.

The x-ray showed that there is quite a bit of excess stool in his small intestine. I got some Fleet laxative tabs (per the Dr's recommendation) to give him tonight and tomorrow.

The CBC was mostly fine. He had a few numbers on the low end of normal and monocyte % was 1% higher than normal.

The allergy panel returned a result that he reacted to the milk allergen. Everything was less than the "absent or undetectable" rate of <.35 kU/L except the milk allergen, which was .43 kU/L, so still in the "low" range of reaction, which is .35-.7. As of when he got home from school yesterday, he has been dairy free. They did test wheat as a potential allergen, but he had no reaction to that.

The Celiac test results seem unusual to me:

Tissue Transglutaminase Ab, IgA - 0.0

Gliadin Peptide Ab, IgG - 22

Gliadin Peptide Ab, IgA - 0.0

All of those should be <7 U/mL

What do those numbers mean? We have a referral to a GI but I have no idea how long that will take to come through. Since I'm sure they'll want to do a scope, I don't want to take my son gluten free.

Thank you so much for the help.

--Kristin

[Jestgar]

They should also have done a total IgA to check for IgA deficiencies. You can't tell if the IgAs are negative, or there just isn't enough to test.

[parker313]

They should also have done a total IgA to check for IgA deficiencies. You can't tell if the IgAs are negative, or there just isn't enough to test.

I see that on the lab notes, that if the IgA is negative, to run a total IgA, but I don't see that they did actually test for the total IgA.

Does the high IgG number alone indicate anything?

[Jestgar]

There is some speculation that high IgG can be caused by other things. Some docs count one positive as Celiac positive, others won't. Most people here will tell you that you should take your son off gluten (after all the testing is done) based on that one result and see if it makes a difference in how he feels.

[parker313]

Thank you very much. I would imagine by the time we get in to the GI for the scope, he will have been off dairy enough to see how that's working for him.