Serum Iga - Help Please!

[alevoy18]

Hi all,

I was diagnosed a year ago with celiac disease through a strong positive blood test and biopsy.

anti-tTG: 60 (range < 20

Biopsy: Moderate villous atrophy with greatly increased intraepithelial lymphocytes.

My anti-tTg was tested again a month ago because I went from feeling good after going gluten-free to feeling bad again. My anti-tTg numbers were 56 (range < 20). These were still too high. My GI doctor sent me for a serum IGA/IGG/IGM levels. Now I expected my serum IGA to be high as well because my anti-tTG was still quite high, but all three of my levels came back completely normal. I didn't see the exact numbers, but I saw nothing was flagged when she opened my chart and my family doc said they looked good. I'm just wondering why my doc checked serum IGA since anti-tTg was already checked? Any help is appreciated and why would only tTG be elevated??

Thanks!!!

[sb2178]

Serum IgA has a wide normal range, so unless you had extremely high TTG (like some people have over 200), you wouldn't necessarily expect it to affect the total. Your doc was probably, at my best guess, evaluating your immune system function overall to see if your entire system is hyper-reactive or otherwise screwy. Since the totals are normal, the most likely conclusion is that you have recently found a new source of exposure to gluten which is a) making you feel awful and is keeping up the auotimmune reaction measured by TTG.

New foods? Living situations? Toiletries? Jobs? Pets? Post up possibilities here and folks will probably help you find your problem.