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I have been following the discussion about this topic with great interest.  In
our case it is our 20 month old son with CD.  He has not been confirmed by
biopsy yet.  The first time we saw the pediatrician about his diarea (in Ft
Wayne, IN) he said "the first thing we need to rule out is CD (actually he used
a 16 cylinder word for it but...)."  It blew our socks off as we had only heard
about CD once before, (a friend who didn't find out she had it until she was in
language school as a missionary in Ukraine).  Since we had been adjusting his
diet for a couple months trying to figure out "what is he allergic to" we put
him on the GF diet, what a change!  Even though we made the usual mistakes as we
learned about gluten and the foods it is in, the change was remarkable.  The
pediatrician in the mean time consulted with the Childrens Hospital in
Indianapolis to find out what he should do as a next step.  He was told a blood
test could be done and a biopsy may not be needed.

After a couple months or so of being GF we did a gluten challange for 1 week (a
very long week, boy did he react, no doubt in our minds he has CD) then the
blood test, supposedly "it wasn't possitive".  I don't know what the numbers
were as that is all the doc told us.  He wanted us to continue the GF diet and
come back in 3 or 4 months.  The time for that is about up but we aren't sure
about going back quite yet.  As we understand it (from Dr. Karoly Horvath on
this group and others) the medical community doesn't usually do blood tests on
children under 2 (why they did it to our son I don't know).  Also they usually
wait for a year to do anything on the child if they are responding to the GF
diet.  We aren't against a biopsy as our son had 3 surgeries before 6 months for
rectal problems (kind of used to various procedures I guess), but how long does
one have to be on a gluten challange for the biopsy to be accurate?  How long
have others waited for their child 2 or under to be officially diagnosed?  or
till what age did they wait?  Are there any who didn't have their child
officially diagnosed (biopsied) for an extended time, if ever?  We don't want to
go through more blood tests if they aren't going to show anything definite but
we also don't want to wait longer than needed to have an official diagnosis.
Since going GF has made such an improvement should we be in any big hurry?

Tim and Kay Meadows, Warsaw, IN
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