Research on Coeliac

After discovering that he had Coeliac, my husband joined Coeliac Australia , who I must say were very prompt in sending out their "Great Start Kit". It was on our doorstep the next day, filled with samples, a cookbook, a magazine, lots of offers and a handbook which was most interesting. We discovered that Coeliac is genetic and 1st degree relatives have a much higher risk of having or developing Coeliac. Now we needed to get the kids tested but they were already on a gluten free diet and so it was most likely that the standard tests (blood antibodies and a gastroscopy biopsy of the small intestine) would give a false negative. The handbook showed that two genes (HLA DQ2 and HLA DQ8) seem to play a role in this disease and you only need one of them to put you in a high risk group. So off to the doctors for their referrals. We decided we would do a full blood work up to check for all the vitamins and body functions (liver, kidney etc) as well as the gene test, so that it would be all over in one go, rather than subjecting them to multiple blood tests. The results showed that our son did not have either of the genes but our daughter did have one of them (DQ2). This meant that there would be further tests required to confirm whether she had Coeliac or not. And of course my son is not completely off the hook, he still seems to be severely intolerant of gluten but not allergic. As a side point both kids were very low in Vitamin D which would probably explain why they have been very prone to illnesses the past few winters.