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Screening for coeliac disease in apparently healthy blood donors
Author(s) -
Grodzinsky E
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
acta pædiatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.1996.tb14245.x
Subject(s) - medicine , coeliac disease , gliadin , antibody , immunology , population , screening test , predictive value , disease , iga deficiency , immunoglobulin a , antigen , immunoglobulin g , pediatrics , gluten , pathology , environmental health
As gliadin is a common food antigen for large people, we have developed an ELIS A for the detection of class‐specific antigliadin antibodies (AGA), with which sera from a large population of apparently healthy blood donors was analysed. A very high prevalence (1/256) of positive AGA was found. However, the positive predictive value (+PV) was found to be very low, 20% for IgA‐AGA and 0% for IgG‐AGA alone. When screening large populations with no or few symptoms, it is desirable to have a high +PV to avoid unnecessary biopsies. IgA antiendomyisum antibodies (IgA‐EM A) were evaluated both as a single test and in combination with IgA‐AGA. When screening individuals for CD in a population with no or few symptoms the easy and cheap IgA‐AGA assay should be used as a first test and the IgA‐EMA to verify the diagnosis and avoid unnecessary biopsies.