American Journal of Clinical Pathology, April 2000 - A New Method of Quantitative Fecal Fat Microscopy and its Correlation with Chemically Measured Fecal Fat Output, by Kenneth Fine, M.D. and Frederick Ogunji Ph.D
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(Celiac.com 07/09/2000) Patients with gluten sensitivity should be evaluated for nutrient malabsorption because if present, this means there is small intestinal damage and institution of a gluten-free diet is imperative to prevent osteoporosis and other nutrient deficiency syndromes. Furthermore, a test at the time of diagnosis serves as a baseline to be compared to later if needed. For more than 50 years, the primary method used to assess for the presence of small intestinal damage and nutrient malabsorption in patients with celiac disease has been a 72-hour quantitative stool collection. However, because this method requires that patients accurately collect all the stools they pass for 3 days (missed stools lead to falsely low results), the test is logistically difficult for medical centers unaccustomed to the procedure, and the voluminous specimens usually are abhorred by patients and laboratory technicians. It poses obvious problems for children who cannot or will not collect all their stools, as well as for patients with chronic diarrhea, who may have bowel movement frequencies reaching 15 or more per day and/or fecal volumes as high as 2 or 3 liters per day. For these reasons, physicians evaluating patients with suspected or proven gluten sensitivity often avoid tests for intestinal malabsorption altogether.
Recently, researchers at the Intestinal Health Institute in Dallas, Texas have developed a new method for quantitating fecal fat excretion that requires collection of only a single stool specimen. Development of this method was based on the fact that as more fat is malabsorbed, the fat globules in stool become more numerous and larger. In a study published in the April 2000 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology entitled A New Method of Quantitative Fecal Fat Microscopy and its Correlation with Chemically Measured Fecal Fat Output, Kenneth Fine, M.D. and Frederick Ogunji Ph.D. tested 180 patients and found a highly statistically significant linear correlation between quantitative fecal fat microscopy (the new method) and chemically measured fecal fat output (the old method). They also showed that their microscopic analysis of just one stool gives comparable results to analysis of an entire 3-day collection. These researchers have, thus, shown that a dedicated quantitative analysis of one stool under a microscope can detect the rise in fecal fat due to intestinal malabsorption (or pancreatic maldigestion) as accurately as 3-day stool collections, making this latter test a thing of the past for most patients.
This new stool test for intestinal malabsorption and other celiac-testing is available for order online from a laboratory set up by Drs. Fine and Ogunji to serve the needs of celiac patients. It is called EnteroLab and can be accessed at Open Original Shared Link.
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