Can entrolab help with UC or Chrons?

[lando]

My daughter is sick, and she might have one or the other. The Dr. hasn't found anything wrong yet. She had a colonoscopy about 2 years ago, and everything came back normal. She is scheduled for another one. She has D, urgency, nausea, pain in her lower right abdomen off and on for about 4 months now. Her first problems started about 2 years ago, lessened, then came back.

[tex]

The EnteroLab food sensitivity tests and the diet work just as well for Crohn's or UC as they do for MC and celiac disease. We have several members who joined our board just to treat UC, for example, and those who have updated their situation have claimed that the diet does a great job of controlling the disease (without any meds).

EnteroLab also offers a lactoferrin test that's mostly specific for UC or Crohn's disease, because unlike MC, those IBDS cause the infusion of neutrophils in intestinal mucosal tissue, and lactoferrin is a marker for neutrophils. Here's what they say about the test:

Tests for an inflammatory protein called lactoferrin from neutrophils (a white blood cell) in stool which mainly occurs in acute bacterial colitis and/or most forms of chronic colitis. It is almost always positive, and strongly so in ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, and while sometimes positive in microscopic colitis, not as often and with a less fervent reaction. It also can be negative in microscopic colitis, but this test would almost never be negative in very active ulcerative colitis or Crohn's colitis. This test is superior (more sensitive and specific) to the old fashioned microscopy test for fecal white cells (fecal wbc's).

She also might have paucicellular lymphocytic colitis, and her doctors (especially her pathologist) are simply not familiar with it, so they are overlooking the diagnostic markers. I have a hunch that paucicellular LC is much more common than realized, but doctors just don't know how to look for it.

Do you happen to have a copy of her biopsy report from the pathologist (not the reinterpreted report from her GI specialist)? Paucicellular LC is marked by an elevated lymphocyte count, but the count is not high enough to meet the minimum standard for LC. If you happen to have a copy of my book, this is described in chapter 3. From page 28:

A biopsy sample from a normal, undiseased colon typically contains approximately five lymphocytes per 100 epithelial cells.6 If more than 20 lymphocytes are counted per 100 epithelial cells, then lymphocytic colitis is indicated.7

A lymphocyte count between 5–20 lymphocytes per 100 epithelial cells will not be diagnosed as LC, but that is the range that lymphocyte counts fall into with paucicellular LC. From pages 32–33:

Another possibility that surely results in many missed diagnoses is paucicellular lymphocytic colitis. Histological markers suggest that rather than it being a subset of lymphocytic colitis, it’s a separate and distinct form of the disease.12 Lack of familiarity with this form of the disease will almost surely lead to a missed diagnosis because of the tendency for lymphocyte counts to be elevated but not high enough to meet the criteria for a diagnosis of LC. As a result, the patient will probably be incorrectly diagnosed with IBS.

Ask her doctor to request that the pathologist do a mast cell count while the biopsy samples are being analyzed from the upcoming colonoscopy exam, to rule out mast cell issues.

Tex

[lando]

Thanks for the answers Tex. The hardest part will be getting my Ex wife to go along with it. She just doesn't understand.

[tex]

She just doesn't understand.

Unfortunately that's a common problem. A lot of people still believe that doctors are always right, and if their doctor can't figure out the problem, then no one can.

Good luck with this,
Tex