Helicobacter Forums

How long ago did you take the treatment? if it's more than 3 years, then you can do blood test to find out if you are reinfected with H. pylori.

Blood test is normally very sensitive. A negative blood result is normally always true. However, a positive result could due to previous exposure. Hence, if you got a positive result, you should get a 2nd confirmation test. eg. stool test or breath test.

So I had diarrhea the last 4 days and went into the walk in clinic and asked to be tested for C diff. The results are back and I do indeed have c diff. It’s been 3 months since pylera....

They prescribed me vancomycin.

Super frustrated.

Hi I’m interested in all this as I too have a GI map with +ve pylori - higher levels than the initial poster here BUT my breath test was negative so my Dr won’t treat. I’m going the natural route but am a little comforted in the fact that the GI map was backed up in this case by a + biopsy. I am 100% symptomatic for pylori..... something must be causing my nausea and tired Lic ....I was 100% fine then boom!!!

Anyone else had a +ve GI MAP then _ve breath?
Thanks

indeed. I would think breath test will be more accurate than GI Map. were you taking any medication 2 weeks before breath test?

No - the odd Zantac but that’s it......but from my understanding this test checks for DNA so at some point I must have had it ?

It may now have passed through - would my stomach take a Long time to heal once it has cleared? Or does it all calm down again pretty quickly?

Thanks

Zantac should be fine for breath test. However, it's probably good to know how negative is negative. Sometimes, we get patients with borderline negative, we would ask the patient to test again in a couple of days.

The DNA test can be oversensitive. So it's not a recommended test in the guideline.

After the treatment, you'll need to repeat the diagnostic test to find out if you still have HP. Given that your breath test is not very accurate, do you have access to stool test?

The recovery is very subjective. It depends on the damage done. Hopefully you'll recover as soon as possible.

Hi thanks - appreciate the advice - I’ll do the overall protocol which is good for gut heath anyway and removing parasites and retest.

I will be so pleased to stop the gnawing pain and constant nausea!!

Hello, sorry to hijack this older thread. I'm wondering if this new GI MAP test has much better sensitivity than a regular stool test, when on ppi. I'm finding it really hard to come off ppi meds, to be able to get a reliable stool test done. Recent stool and blood tests i've done are all negative now, but i did have a positive stool test 6-7 months ago. Most doctors in my area say that any HP test is invalid when taking ppis.

Negative blood test is almost always true.
I wonder how positive is your stool test. It's likely a false positive if you really have a negative blood test.

GI Map is frequently being discussed here in this forum. I believe it's a DNA based test. I have not used the test myself, but I would expect high false positive and false negative rate.

you can switch your PPI to ranitidine for two weeks. Then two to three weeks later, stop ranitidine the night before breath test. Ranitidine doesnt stay in your body for long and so it wont affect the breath test.

Hi and thank you for your response.
The stool test just said positive no raw value. I do have a raw value for the blood test, 0.7 with <0.9 being negative, 0.9-1.1 indeterminate, >1.1 positive. I repeated the blood test at 3 labs and the values were very close.
I did try to switch to ranitidine also, but could only do it for 5 days, it was not as good as the ppi and the pain was getting worse and worse. I did a stool test right at the 5th day and it was again negative. I havent tried a breath test though.