Ttg Iga, Not Positive, But Increased In A Year And A Half

[melblondin]

My son was diagnosed as celiac today. He definitely manifests many if not all of the classic symptoms for children, so we are going to go gluten free as we have already seen improvement, but I have a question regarding his bloodwork because as I understand it, without IgA being positive and/or a pos. scope, he can't officially be diagnosed as celiac, correct?

At 1 and a half yrs of age were:

IGG 19.9 (20.0-30.0 weak positive)

IGA 2.3 (<20.0 negative)

TTG IgA .2 (ref. range 0.0 - 10.0)

(No total IgA was drawn, so I don't know if he's deficient or not)

At 3 yrs. old they are:

IGG 16.0 (<20.0 negative)

IGA 7.2 (<20.0 negative)

TTG IgA 2.4 (ref. range <4.0)

My questions are:

1) Is it normal for someone's TTG IgA to be increasing over time?

2) Can we get a total serum IgA count while being gluten free?

Also, his complete blood count revealed slight microcytosis (iron deficient anemia as I understand it) and a slightly elevated neutrophil level.

Thanks for your help!!

[ravenwoodglass]

My questions are:

1) Is it normal for someone's TTG IgA to be increasing over time?

2) Can we get a total serum IgA count while being gluten free?

Also, his complete blood count revealed slight microcytosis (iron deficient anemia as I understand it) and a slightly elevated neutrophil level.

Thanks for your help!!

You have a wise doctor. Now to your questions.

1 No the TTG IGA would not increase over time without a reason.

2. Yes the total IGA can be tested at any time. It is not a 'celiac' test. It is a measure of the total IGA. If that is low then then it would throw off the IGA testing for celiac causeing the IGA result to be falsely low.

Someone else may be able to explain it a bit better though. I am a bit brain foggy this week.

[Jestgar]

The tests aren't sensitive enough to say there is a difference in levels for anything below the reference range.

[Mari]

Microcytic anemia is the usual type of anemia associated with celiac disease.

It is much easier to intrepret more specific tests. My first blood test was a Celiac Panel and included tests for anti - glaidin, anti-tissue transglutaminase and nowdays a Celiac Panel includes an endomysin test.

What's more important than convincing the DRs that your child has celiac disease is your conviction that he must learn to lead a gluten free life. He has the symptoms and does better gluten free. If you now order the genetic marker test and they are positive for a predisposition to develop celiac disease then you have evidence that this is the problem. There are several labs online where you can order the genetic tests, I used Enterolab.com. In addition Enterolab can do the specific antibody tests on feces which are more sensitive and accurate than the blood tests and also test for food allergies and fecal fat levels. Their website has lots of information.

[nora-n]

The test results for IgA and IgG might just be the total IgA and total IgG, as it did not say what kind of IgA or IgG was done.

In that case, the total IgA was well below the range.

Better to check out what tests really were done.

[melblondin]

Microcytic anemia is the usual type of anemia associated with celiac disease.

It is much easier to intrepret more specific tests. My first blood test was a Celiac Panel and included tests for anti - glaidin, anti-tissue transglutaminase and nowdays a Celiac Panel includes an endomysin test.

What's more important than convincing the DRs that your child has celiac disease is your conviction that he must learn to lead a gluten free life. He has the symptoms and does better gluten free. If you now order the genetic marker test and they are positive for a predisposition to develop celiac disease then you have evidence that this is the problem. There are several labs online where you can order the genetic tests, I used Enterolab.com. In addition Enterolab can do the specific antibody tests on feces which are more sensitive and accurate than the blood tests and also test for food allergies and fecal fat levels. Their website has lots of information.

My doctor actually is convinced that he has celiac. I just wasn't sure if technically speaking we could come to that conclusion by most medical standards w/o pos. bloodwork and/or a biopsy. I also believe that he has celiac, but there's part of me that wants to know for sure whether it's a gluten sensitivity or an AI disorder. I know it doesn't really make a difference as far as his diet is concerned; I guess I'm just curious.

We do suspect that he carries one of the genes for celiac because I recently tested positive for DQ 2.5 At some point we would like to do the genetic testing for him as well.

Thanks for the point on the anemia. I thought that was the case that that type of anemia is strongly assoc. with celiac disease, which is another confirmation that we're on the right track.

[melblondin]

The test results for IgA and IgG might just be the total IgA and total IgG, as it did not say what kind of IgA or IgG was done.

In that case, the total IgA was well below the range.

Better to check out what tests really were done.

As far as I know, he wasn't tested for total IgA and IgG. The exact wording is:

Gliadian (deamidated) AB, Eval

Gliadin AB IGG

Gliadin AB IGA

[nora-n]

Thanks for the excact wording.

This was the new deamidated gliadin test, and the antigliadin IgG and antigliadin IgA test.

The deamidated gliadin test is very new and only some labs have started to use it.

Dr. Ford in NZ has commented on it too, you can google ford gluten.

Nora

[melblondin]

Thanks for the excact wording.

This was the new deamidated gliadin test, and the antigliadin IgG and antigliadin IgA test.

The deamidated gliadin test is very new and only some labs have started to use it.

Dr. Ford in NZ has commented on it too, you can google ford gluten.

Nora

Oh wow, Nora, thank you so much for pointing that out. From what I'm reading online, it looks like the deamidated IgG test has a 98.6% specificity rate. I guess that puts an end to my wondering if it was truly positive bloodwork for celiac! I was originally thinking that that number was sensitive to gluten, but not specific for celiac, but I hadn't realized it was a diff. test than the old one for IgG. Thanks for clearing that up for me!!!!!!!! It's looking to me like we've caught it early on, which I'm so thankful for.