Helicobacter Forums

In 2002 I broke out in a rash all over my body. A blood test was run and IGG, IGA and IGM was tested. I had a high level of IGM AB for h pylori. Per this article:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2725530/

"IgM showed little clinical utility, with an unacceptably low sensitivity."

"IgM has been found to have little diagnostic utility for H. pylori infections and is elevated only acutely after infection, whereas H. pylori infections are generally chronic (8, 18). Here we show that IgM has extremely low sensitivity, confirming its lack of clinical utility in either children or adults."

This makes it sound like IGM is useless when in fact it can be positive if tested during the initial infection. The article also says this:

"Overall, IgM demonstrated low sensitivity (6.8%) but high specificity (95.8%) with no statistical difference between children and adults."

Doesn't this mean IGM maybe poor in catching past infections in terms of sensitivity, but if it's positive then it's an active infection since the IGM has HIGH SPECIFICITY in detecting H Pylori of 95.8%?

While it probably won't catch most h pylori infections due to IGM low sensitivity (6.8%), IF IGM DOES indicate you are h pylori positive then that result is actually highly specific and you are likely in the midst of an initial acute infection of h pylori. ????

I have a low IGA and selective IGG deficiency BTW. Regardless it seems I was in the middle of an acute infection.

For IgM the cutoffs were ≤0.8 for a negative result, 0.9 to 1.1 for an equivocal result, and ≥1.2 for a positive result.

My H Pylori IGM at the rime was 2.2

I am not expert in immunology, but my understanding is, IgM only present in the very early stage of infection. The immune system generate this low specificity prototype antibody to try the "market". When a particular IgM is in "high demand", then the immune system produce the same type in IgG form to give a effective "neutralisation" effect.

Therefore, in any acute infection, i

Given that Helicobacter normally infect human for decades, it's rare to use IgM for diagnostic. However, you may have other "harmless" helicobacter species in the intestine that is picked up by the IgM. Nevertheless, that's just an hypothesis. I think most importantly, you are most likely free of Helicobacter pylori.