Are high blood test for celiac disease predictive of positive biopsies?

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This study was seeking to determine whether a high response to the TTG screening blood test for celiac disease is as accurate as the current method of diagnosing celiac disease which entails a general anesthetic and upper endoscopy to obtain biopsies of the small intestine. If the screening blood test for celiac disease is highly accurate, then some patients that are being evaluated for celiac disease may not require an upper GI endoscopy and can be treated more quickly. If they respond to the therapy (a gluten free diet) then they will be deemed to have celiac disease.
Conclusion: Only VERY HIGH titre results –greater than the range of the test used (<200 in this case), were reliable in predicting positive biopsy results.Reported to the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition in 2006 by Dr. Colin Barker at the BC Children’s Hospital, however the research and the full study was not completed until 2011. Now with genetic testing being available, with HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8 being identified as the Celiac genes, in addition to the serology or blood test, it is now common practice at the BC Children’s Hospital to not perform upper endoscopies on pediatric patients when a genetic marker is present and the Celiac Disease screening test response is found to be very high for the stereology test range.