Blood Test Soon - Purposefully Eating Gluten....

[OpheliaBee]

I'm having a blood test done soon to test for signs of Celiac disease. My doctor has encouraged me to "Challenge" myself by consuming gluten prior to the test in the hopes of decreasing the chance of a false-negative.

How much gluten should I introduce into my diet? How far ahead of time should I be on a gluten diet? A week? A day? Should I eat a single piece of bread a day or more? Please help!

I don't want to eat more than I need to, but I also want to get as accurate of a test as I possibly can.

[mushroom]

Your doctor is right that you should be eating gluten for the test. The bad news is that you probably should be eating more than he (and you) anticipate.

Recommendations for testing are the gluten equivalent of three to four slices of bread a day for a period of 2-3 months Most doctors, unfortunately, are not aware of this. They tell their patients to go gluten free and once they respond well to the diet they say, "right, let's test you for celiac disease" by which time there is no chance of the test being positive (or precious little). The procedure should be done the other way around, IMHO. If you really want to know if you have celiac disease rather than a gluten intolerance, and want a reliable test result, you will need to eat gluten for the amount of time set forth above. I don't know how long you have been gluten free or gluten lite, but I hope this prospect is not too daunting for you.

[tarnalberry]

exactly what mushroom said. you have to do significant enough damage to make sure that you're producing lots of auto-antibodies and that they can escape the GI system (which they shouldn't be able to do in a healthy situation) and can be detected in high enough levels in the blood. 3-4 slices of bread for 3 months gives you decent odds on not getting a false negative. a week or two... eh, not even worth doing the lab tests.

[OpheliaBee]

The gist I'm getting from my doctor is that, should the test be negative I'll have to get a biopsy done, and if its positive....I'll need a biopsy done.

Since I'll have that and other tests to determine the severity of any damage the disease has to my insides.... is there any reason at all for the blood test? I've decided that my symptoms are severe enough and I'm getting cross-contaminated so frequently that I need to know if I'm gluten sensitive, wheat-allergic, or full-on celiac.

[Skylark]

You want the blood tests because they provide a simple way to follow your response to the diet if they're positive. Any TTG that's present should fall to zero with the diet. You have to gluten yourself up for 2-3 months for the biopsy anyway, because it's as meaningless as the blood test on the gluten-free diet.