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Dear Kathy,
your question about CD and poor growth is one of the most frequent
questions that I deal with in my practice and I am more then happy to try
to give you more insight on this issue.  Children with typical
symptoms of the disease (i.e. chronic diarrhea, irritability, distended
abdomen, etc.) present poor weight gain or weight loss, while the high
is usually not affected, at least in the first stage of the disease.
Consequently, they appear dystrophic (weight/high <5 centile).  These
patients do not offer any problems in terms of diagnosis.  More difficult
to identify are the cases presenting atypical symptoms.  Sometimes the
short stature is the only symptom present.  In other cases the weight
and/or the high may fall off from the growth chart (i.e. weight gain
unappropriate for their age, high growth< 6.5 cm/year), but no
gastrointestinal symptoms are present.  As concern your child, the "drop"
in centile at 15 month of age is not unusual and may be due to changes in
diet, eruption of teeth, etc.  On the other hand, he had a proportional
growth since age two, remaining on the same centiles. Based on the previous
considerations, it is unlikely that he is affected by CD.
Different story would be if he is a first degree relative of a proved CD
patients.  Since the prevalence of CD among first relatives of celiacs is
higher then in the general population, it is now general recommendation
to screen them for the presence of antigliadin and antiendomysium
antibodies in the blood, despite the presence of symptoms resembling CD.

Alessio Fasano, M.D., Director
Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition
University of Maryland, School of Medicine
22 S. Greene St., PO Box 140
Baltimore, MD 21201