At-Home Urine/Stool Test to Detect Exposure to Gluten
Your patients can now buy at-home test that detects gluten in urine or stool. This test is similar to a pregnancy test, allowing your patients to better monitor if they've been exposed to gluten.
The gluten-free diet is the only treatment currently known to effectively manage the symptoms of celiac disease (CD) and non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS). Strictly following the gluten free diet, for a lifetime in case of CD, helps to relieve most if not all symptoms. However, some patients don’t see improvement even on the gluten free diet. The reason for this may be twofold. Sometimes there may be other underlying conditions causing symptoms that resemble those of celiac or NCGS. But, quite often, it may simply be due to your patient being continuously exposed to gluten.
Celiacs or patients with NCGS are used to reading food labels or taking precautions when eating out, however they may not realize there may be hidden sources of gluten in medication, either prescription or OTC. For example, the FDA doesn’t require pharmaceutical companies to declare the source of starch in medication. And, starch derived from wheat is often used in the outside casing of many pills. Unless your patient calls the pharmaceutical company to confirm the medication is indeed gluten free, they may be consuming gluten on a regular basis without even realizing it.
One way to monitor whether your patient has been compliant with the gluten free diet is to repeat the serologic test that was used in the initial celiac diagnosis and compare the results. However, now we finally have a test that patients can you use themselves at home to confirm whether they’ve been inadvertently exposed to gluten. GlutenDetect at-home test is designed to detect gluten in stool or urine samples. It works similarly to a pregnancy test. The test should be available in stores in the U.S. by the end of year. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in purchasing GlutenDetect test, you may do so by emailing the producer directly at info@biomedal.com.
Celiacs or patients with NCGS are used to reading food labels or taking precautions when eating out, however they may not realize there may be hidden sources of gluten in medication, either prescription or OTC. For example, the FDA doesn’t require pharmaceutical companies to declare the source of starch in medication. And, starch derived from wheat is often used in the outside casing of many pills. Unless your patient calls the pharmaceutical company to confirm the medication is indeed gluten free, they may be consuming gluten on a regular basis without even realizing it.
One way to monitor whether your patient has been compliant with the gluten free diet is to repeat the serologic test that was used in the initial celiac diagnosis and compare the results. However, now we finally have a test that patients can you use themselves at home to confirm whether they’ve been inadvertently exposed to gluten. GlutenDetect at-home test is designed to detect gluten in stool or urine samples. It works similarly to a pregnancy test. The test should be available in stores in the U.S. by the end of year. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in purchasing GlutenDetect test, you may do so by emailing the producer directly at info@biomedal.com.
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