I dont know if I have misunderstood this but as a child I had really bad hay fever and asthma. So in my teenage years I was given a course of vaccines every week for a few months of ever increasing amounts of whatever it was I was supposed to be allergic to. I used to get extremely fatigued after each one with a local hot swollen arm. Needless to say they didnt work and in actual fact I think they made me worse.

Some years later in my early 20's (this was in the 1970"s) the Hospital Allergy Clinic did some blood tests and I remember a Doctor acting really surprised and saying to me we cant find any antibodies, which was strange given the vaccines. He then asked if they could take some blood because a friend of his was doing some experiments with food testing as well as other allergies and would I be prepared to take it to his lab in Hampstead I think it was. I did and when I got the results back I was told that I was allergic to wheat, cows milk, cheese, and a whole list of things and was promptly sent to a dietician. I tried the exclusion diet but in those days it was almost impossible with none of the conveniences we have now and was a case of what I could eat rather than what I could not, so I gave up.

Strange how now I have 4 autoimmune conditions and one of them concerns gluten. Whats even more strange is that I am stubbornly seronegative for most except Thyroid antibodies. Very interesting - if I have the connection correct.

An interesting article, pretender. I guess it shows that various problems with the immune system will give the same or similar blood test results. So you need a biopsy to confirm coeliac. The blood test for ankylosing spondylitis has similar result. Presumably some of the same genes must be affected?

This article explains it better than I can...

www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides...

pretender, can you be a bit more explicit about what you think this shows? I'm not normally this slow to pick up on things, but perhaps I'm having a "stupid" day... I'd appreciate it.

On my current bout of Coeliac Disease my first blood test was IgA, a follow up blood test was for IgA & IgG plus others.
IgA & IgG also being used for Allergies which Coeliac Disease is not an allergy.
My IgA was positive and apart from CD I also have a Formaldehyde Allergy so it was really the endoscopy result of reduced folds,d2 that really confirmed my CD.

Ig tests look for antibodies, which can be a reaction to autoimmune disease or to allergies.