Blood Test Confusion! Please Help1

[orangez28cam]

I'm new to the board, just got my blood test results back yesterday. My family doctor isn't familiar with Celiac disease, looked at my blood tests and said she was suspicious foe Celiac Disease, and referred me to a gastrointestinal specialist. I can't get in to see the specialist until the 1st of December and it's driving me crazy not knowing what these blood test results mean. Here are my results:

Deamidated Gliadin ABS, IGA: 55 (moderate to strong positive >30)

Deamidated Gliadin ABS, IGG: 8 (negative 0-19)

T-Transglutaminase (TTG) IGA: <2 (negative 0-3)

T-Transglutaminase (TTG) IGG: 6 (weak positive 6-9)

Endomysial antibody IGA is negative

Immunoglobulin A. QN. Serum is 174 (70-400 range)

I have lots of symptoms of celiac disease, been diagnosed with IBS in the past, but requested celiac testing based on all of my symptoms. I have searched the internet, and sort of understand the testing for the most part. It appears I am positive for Gliadin IGA and TTG IGG. I can't seem to find much info on TTG IGG. There is a lot of info on TTG IGA, but not the other. Can someone please help me make some sense of this? I'm so confused!!! Thank you!

[SGWhiskers]

It is not uncommon for a person with celiac to have some positives and some negatives. That is part of the reason for running so many different tests in the panel. If you are positive on one, you have celiac. It looks like you get to join the club and get rid of the IBS symptoms. Congrats. Good for your doc for at least getting you tested. At least he admits he does not know how to read the test results.

You've got several options from here.

1) Stay on a hefty dose of gluten from now until you get an endoscopy with a GI doc. It is possible that the endoscopy biopsy will miss the sites of damage and you could wind up with a negative from that test dispite a positive diagnosis from blood tests.

2) Go gluten free and get rid of the IBS symptoms as soon as possible. You can always head to the GI doc and say "I tried strict gluten free and it is working." Of course with this approach, if you decide you want the biopsy, you will need to start eating gluten again for 2 months and will probably hate every minute of it. (The biopsy and blood work will give false negatives if you are gluten free).

3) You can mess around with a little gluten free and a little gluten food and screw up the biopsy and feel crummy the whole time and get the impression gluten free food does nothing for you even though you never were truly gluten free. It takes 3 months or so to get good at it.

I chose to stay on gluten until my biopsy because I didn't give enough weight to the value of a positive celiac blood panel. A positive on the blood test and on biopsy made me feel confident in my diagnosis in the beginning. When I see a doctor and tell them I have celiac disease, they seem to give me some level of credibility with the blood/biopsy statement that I'm not just a fad dieter. In retrospect, however, I didn't need the biopsy and put myself through 2 months of extra gluten and neuro damage because I was a newbie. I should have gone gluten free and never looked back.

Keep asking questions and searching the website. People here have a ton of knowledge and experience.

[Skylark]

Welcome to the board.

Deamidated Gliadin ABS, IGA: 55 (moderate to strong positive >30)

This is a very good test for celiac. There are folks around here who had negatives on the other tests, but this test identified their celiac disease. The TTG IgG is also suggestive, but not as much so since you have normal amounts of IgA. Your GI will probably want to do a biopsy, so you might give his office a call and find out if you need to continue eating gluten to get accurate results or whether they want you to start the gluten-free diet right away.

By the way, even if you do not show damage on biopsy you should try the diet once the testing is done. It is very likely to help your IBS and other symptoms.

[orangez28cam]

Thank you both so much! All of this is so new to me and it's all so confusing at first! I think I will stick with eating gluten for now, and see the GI doc about a biopsy. It's funny how now that I know what might be causing my symptoms, those doughnuts, cereals, breads, just don't look quite as delicisous.

[nora-n]

Yes, this new test (deamidated gliadin) is supposed to be a very good test for celiac, and many labs have started using this one as the preferred test for celiac now.

Interesting that the other tests were negative/weakly positive. It shows that they cannot rule out ceiac with just a negative test, and that just running the old ttg test is not good enough.