Hi Jen,
If your doctor ruled out celiac disease by genetic blood testing, he probably only looked for the main celiac genes, which are HLA DQ2 or HLA DQ8.
What Dr. Hadjivassilou's research on gluten ataxia points out is that 20% of his patients had a different genetic type... HLA DQ1. Has that been tested for? Typically, it is not.
Dr. H's research is all relatively new, most of it in the past ten years... which means it is just beginning to cross over into "real time" medicine.
Quote:
From "Gluten sensitivitiy as a neurological Illness" by M Hadjivassiliou, R A Grunewald, G A B Davies-Jones:
"Within the group of patients with neurological disease and gluten sensitivity (defined by the presence of anti-gliadin antibodies) we have found a similar HLA association to that seen in patients with CD: 70% of patients have the HLA DQ2 (30% in the general population), 9% have the HLA DQ8, and the remainder have HLA DQ1. The finding of an additional HLA marker (DQ1) seen in the remaining 20% of our patients may represent an important difference between the genetic susceptibility of patients with neurological presentation to those with gastrointestinal presentation within the range of gluten sensitivity."
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The only place I know of where you can easily get testing done for HLA DQ1 is via Enterolab in Texas. However, any doctor could order the testing to look for HLA DQ1. They just don't know to look for it because it isn't considered a main celiac gene.
Wheat allergy is an IgE immune system response and is different than gluten sensitivity (which involves and IgA or IgG immune system response). Wheat allergy will show up on an allergy skin prick test. Gluten sensitivity will not.
Cara