New Celiac Blood Tests Are Now Available

[tex]

Hi All,

If someone else has already posted about this, please forgive me for having a bad memory.

In September, the FDA granted approval for a couple of new celiac blood tests that should provide improved specificity for detecting anti-gliadin antibodies. I don't believe that these tests will show the early-warning sensitivity of the stool tests offered by Enterolab, but at least they should be an improvement over the earlier blood tests. They should reduce they number of false positives. Unfortunately, that's not the primary problem with the current blood tests. The main problem is false negative results.

http://www.phadia.us/dia_templates/Page____59756.aspx

Tex

[Rosie]

Tex, inquiring minds want to know, and I was curious as to how much more sensitive the new test is. The old RAST test are reported on a scale from 0 to 6 kU/l (whatever units kU are) Anything below 0.35 is consider to be negative, or too low to be detected. The new test has a lower detection limit of 0.1, so it extends the range of detection. I didn't find any information on how clinically important that increase in dynamic range might be, or how much higher a percentage of positives that represents. But of course, anything that improves sensitivity is good, since we already know that the current tests miss a lot of people who are sensitive.

Rosie

[tex]

Rosie,

Beats me. I'm not a chemist, so I really don't know how it works. I just read that it was being promoted as an improved test procedure.

Tex