Antibodies Testing

[ktorange]

My doctor gave me a lab slip for a blood test called "Celiac Disease Comp Panel". I'm assuming that this is testing mostly for antibodies pertaining to gluten. I have been mostly gluten free for about two years. I simply feel better without gluten!

Should I eat some gluten prior to the test for the antibodies to show up, that is, if I have any?

I would love to have a GI test, but I think I'm going to have a hard time getting my doctor to do that. I know at the very least, I'm gluten intolerant. I also have thyroid disease and adrenal issues.

Thanks for any input!

[ravenwoodglass]

My doctor gave me a lab slip for a blood test called "Celiac Disease Comp Panel". I'm assuming that this is testing mostly for antibodies pertaining to gluten. I have been mostly gluten free for about two years. I simply feel better without gluten!

Should I eat some gluten prior to the test for the antibodies to show up, that is, if I have any?

I would love to have a GI test, but I think I'm going to have a hard time getting my doctor to do that. I know at the very least, I'm gluten intolerant. I also have thyroid disease and adrenal issues.

Thanks for any input!

For any celiac testing you need to go back on gluten for at least 2 to 3 months and even then you may still have a false negative. If you going gluten free helped with issues you were having you don't need a doctors permission to stay gluten free.

[mushroom]

Hi ktorange, and welcome to the forum.

Unfortunately, your premonitions are correct. If you have been gluten free for so long there is no way that the celiac panel is going to give your any kind of meaningful measurement of your gluten antibodies. Likewise, the endoscopy with biopsy will be similarly negative because by now your small intestine should be healed and reveal little trace of the damage gluten can do.

If your doctor wants you to do a gluten challenge, be aware that in order to get accurate results on the celiac panel you would need to eat the equivalent of three to four slices of bread per day for two to three months to generate the amount of antibodies in your blood and the degree of damage in your small intestine that could be measured by the blood tests and the endoscopy with biopsy. I believe you would need to think long and hard before you decided to do this. Many doctors are unaware that it takes this long and this much gluten to give an accurate result. And to do it for a shorter time would only cause you unnecessary distress. This is the reason that so many of us remain undiagnosed, because the gluten challenge to get tested is just too painful. Once we have been off gluten we tend to respond more forcefully to it, and most of us cannot make it past 2-3 weeks of gluten eating before we give up because of the pain

Your thyroid problems and adrenal insufficiency are indicators of problems with gluten, and your presumably positive response to the diet is another. Is there some particular reason why you feel the need to have the celiac piece of paperr? Because at this point I should warn you that just because you feel better without gluten does not automatically mean that you have what is classified as celiac disease. Many people have problems with gluten but test negative for celiac, both on blood tests and biopsy. It is what has come to be known as non-celiac gluten intolerance, and is a reaction to gluten for which a test has not yet been devised, and in fact has not even been understood.

So when you have digested this information, talk to us some more

[cassP]

So when you have digested this information, talk to us some more

Clever! very clever