Tissue Transglutam Ab Iga 15

[Gautam]

Hi,

I am a new member to this forum.My 3.5 yrs daughter is just 28 pounds now and 3ft in height.We were concerned for her weight and height and thus our Pedi did the blood test.All was fine except

Tissue TransGlutam AB IGA - 15 (normal <5) and she said she is celiac.

The Gliadin AB(IGA) as <3 ( refernce range <11) and IGA Serum - 40 (reference range 24-121).

Please let me know if these results really indicate a celiac case.

[Roda]

My youngest son who was 5 when he was tested again(he is 6 now) only had his Iga ttg show positive. It was just one number over positive, but positive none the less. IMHO a child that age should not have those antibodies unless they are celiac as false positives are pretty rare. I put my son gluten free based on his blood work only and the fact that I am diagnosed with celiac. About 4 1/2 month later we did a gluten challenge and it confirmed that he can not have gluten. Given all three things, positive blood test, mom diagnosed with celiac and horrible response to the gluten challenge, I am confident he has celiac. If you are going to go through with a biopsy and are not done testing then keep her eating a regular gluten filled diet until testing is complete.

[Skylark]

Yes, she is almost certainly celiac. That TTG antibody is the autoimmune antibody that appears in celiac disease, and it's correlated pretty well with mucosal damage in kids. The IGA serum test should be normal; it only tests total IgA. Anti-gliadin is a notoriously poor test, so it's not unusual to have that one come back negative. The other disease that might cause TTG is Crohn's, and I would think she would have more symptoms.

You could consider having an endoscopy and biopsy done if you want to be absolutely sure, but that's a lot to put a kid through. As Roda says, she needs to stay on her normal diet if you are going to have a biopsy. Otherwise you might get a false negative.