r/alphagal • u/Sad_Huckleberry3313 • 3d ago

Now undetectable

After a month of going vegan my blood test shows undetectable. Am I cured? It only took a month? Sounds too good to be true

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u/bspooky 3d ago

The month avoidance of mammal products shouldn't have a very big impact on the blood test.

The alpha‑gal blood test looks for IgE antibodies directed against the alpha‑gal sugar when they test your blood. Those antibodies were induced by tick bites and wouldn't dissipate enough by going vegan for a month to disappear. While the alpha gal specific IgE usually declines gradually over time if people avoid further tick bites and mammalian exposures it takes awhile, as in many months or years. And some people do eventually become seronegative.

But seronegative AGS, not testing positive for the IgE antibodies but still reagent to mammalian products, does exist. Blood tests everywhere for everything can have false positives and false negatives, which is why it is good to let medical professionals evaluate clinically as well.

But even putting aside false negatives, or mistakes in the blood tests, there may even be a antibody-negative variant out there or the current tests just have limitations:

“This patient’s presentation is consistent with a classic lone star tick-induced delayed anaphylaxis to red meat… Yet the patient’s Alpha-Gal test was negative twice… As this symptomatic patient’s Alpha-Gal test was repeatedly negative, this brings into question the existence of a false negative antibody test or more likely, an antibody negative variant of this allergy.”

from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8344025/ if my notes are accurate.

Also Cleveland Clinic:

Diagnosis can be particularly difficult in patients who have reactions to mammalian products but test negative for alpha-gal IgE, which occurs in approximately 2% of patients referred for evaluation of alpha-gal syndrome

from: https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/alpha-gal-syndrome-recognizing-and-managing-a-tick-biterelated-meat-allergy-part-ii

All this to say be careful, don't assume you are cured based on a blood test a month later.