Helicobacter Forums

Hi! I have gastritis and need to test for h. pylori. My stool antigen test was negative some time ago. However, to exclude the bug my doc ordered me to do a breath test. The thing is, as it requires a patient to drink orange juice, I don't think I will be able to tolerate it. Can a quantitative IgG blood test be more conclusive? If not, I'll bite the bullet and do the breath test. I do not and have not used antibiotics or PPIs recently. Thanks!

Hi, not all breath test require an orange juice.
but breath test would be the better choice than quantitative IgG test.

To use the IgG data, you will need at least 3 tests done with an interval of 3 months. If the trend of is gradually reducing, then it is a sign of HP negative.

Hi! My IgG serum antibodies are as follows:

December 1st 2020 - 10.52
February 4th, 2021 - 6.12
September 23th, 2021 - 5.0

What bothers me a bit is the fact that the antibodies are still detected and fall into the uncertain category (<5 would be negative), although many months have passed since the previous test. Is it expected that the body will try to keep some antibodies for a while? Thanks!

yup. The antibody in the blood can remain positive for years.

but it's good that you did three tests and the trend is going downwards. So that gives the indication that it's most probably negative of H. pylori. Otherwise, the antibody would remain constantly high.

Thanks so much for your reply!
By the way, I wanted to ask you about fecal antibody tests for h.pilory - are they currently considered accurate? I get they're noninvasive and not extremely expensive, but can they be used as standalone tests or do they need to be confirmed by other methods?
A couple of gastroenterologists recommended them, but several docs have told me they're obsolete with a really high rate of false negatives.

The stool antigen test is as good as breath test.
it can be used as a stand alone test.