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I've recently had a curious situation somewhat resolved, and
wondered what the collective mind of the Celiac Mailing List
thinks of it.
My son, Eli, will be two in July. We figured out that he might
be celiac about a year ago, and had the igA igG and
anti-endomesial blood tests conducted, but they were sent to the
wrong laboratory, with negative results on all tests. Eli,
however, thrived and improved on the GF diet, so we kept him GF
for the last year. We decided to revisit the issue again,
challenged him with Wheat, Oats, Barley, Millet and Rye for
three weeks and re-did the blood tests.
Eli tested positive on igA, igG and negative on the
anti-endomesial test. Our doctor (a pediatric gastroenterologist
who's quite familiar with CD) concluded - "you've done a good job
keeping him gluten free - we'll have to repeat this test in a
year."
Quite obviously there are two possibilities: 1) This is an
allergy, and not CD, or 2) This is CD, but for some reason,
including the age of the subject (less than 2) the
anti-endomesial test is a false negative.
Are there any possibilities I've overlooked? Can anyone direct
me to anything other than the recent discussion of blood testing
on this mailing list which would shed some light on this
situation?
If my wife and I were _really_ curious, we'd have another
challenge and a biopsy, but a) we're not really wild about having
a biopsy done on an almost 2 year old and b) we're content to run
a GF diet for Eli for another year.
Another kink in the scenario - Eli will have a little brother or
sister born next month - at least this time his monther and
father will know what to look for when we get the gassiest baby
in Maryland (which was how Eli was described by some of our
friends).
John Cornell
Rockville, MD
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