Helicobacter Pylori and Autism - What Tests to Perfom

In the first video on Helicobacter Pylori, or H Pylori, I discussed what H Pylori is and what it does.  The testing for H Pylori can be done a few different ways.  Most commonly doctors will run what is called an H Pylori antibody test which looks at antibodies.  Antibodies are immune proteins generated by the immune system because of an infection, either viral or bacteria.  Many labs can perform the most commonly done test which is called an IgG antibody to H Pylori. What the IgG test tells you is whether there has been exposure to H Pylori.  It will not tell you whether the H Pylori infection is active however. So even after running the IgG test for H Pylori you still need to correlate it with symptoms.  IgA and IgM antibody tests to H Pylori can also be done but often times you must request that. Those tests can be important because IgM is a marker of current immune activity or immune activation to an active infection. IgA falls into that complex also. So the common blood tests for H Pylori are the IgA, IgM and IgG antibody tests.

Another form of testing for H Pylori is through a breath test but that is difficult to do with children, especially small children so it is not used often in the pediatric population or the Autism population either. You can do stool testing and some labs look at antigen stains or do an antigen test for H Pylori. One lab that I commonly use is called Bio Health Diagnostics. They have a 401 panel that is a stool pathogen panel that you can add the H Pylori option to it making it a 401 H. When you add that panel it really is a comprehensive test that looks for parasites like Blastosis Hominis, Entamoeba Histolytica, Giardia and Cryptosporidium in addition to looking at H Pylori via the stool antigen test. And when a test shows that the stool antigen is present, that is a good indicator that and active H Pylori infection is occurring.  So when treating children with Autism I will often add this test on and then I can see whether H Pylori is a problem as well as see if there are other parasites that other stool tests have missed.

The major tests that are done to determine if H Pylori is present are blood testing, breath testing and stool testing.  The most commonly used tests in the Autism community are the stool and the blood.  I know that having blood drawn in small children can be difficult.  So if you physician is only going to run the IgG test for H Pylori, that will not be enough in my experience.  I would suggest running at least the IgA and IgM antibody tests and it would be even better to run the H Pylori stool antigen test also.