In general, the way to approach diagnostics is first to understand what you want to test for. What you want to test for depends on what you or a healthcare professional thinks may be causing any symptoms. This will depend on the symptoms themselves and other factors like your age, family history, medical history and previous tests.
We don’t have access to all this information about each person, so it’s very difficult for us to give specific recommendations about what tests may or may not be appropriate for each individual.
In general, our test products can be divided into two types:
- Test panels that test for a number of different conditions at the same time
- Tests for one or two specific things - e.g. a test for bowel inflammation or coeliac disease
Test panels
If your aim is to rule out important and common medical conditions that can cause gut symptoms then either our Complete Gut Health Test and Symptom Screen or Essential Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Screening Test are the two most appropriate options.
Complete Gut Health Test and Symptom Screen
The Complete Gut Health Test and Symptom Screen is designed as a very comprehensive test panel to look for the major, common diseases causing gut symptoms and is based on guidelines from The British Society of Gastroenterology. Specifically it checks for bowel cancer, gut inflammation, bleeding in the bowel, coeliac disease, thyroid problems, H. Pylori infection, and infection with other bacteria and parasites. You have the option to add on stool microscopy and a test of pancreas function, the latter of which may be useful if you have loose stools.
Essential Irritable Bowel Syndrome Screening Test
The Essential IBS Screening Test is a more targeted panel and contains the specific tests recommended by the British Society of Gastroenterology for people who may have irritable bowel syndrome. This is one of the commonest causes of gut symptoms but the symptoms are similar to H. Pylori infection, gut inflammation and coeliac disease so this simple test panel checks for these conditions. If you’re 40 or over you should also check for bowel cancer with a qFIT test as this becomes more common with age.
Specific Tests
As mentioned, these two panels include all the individual gut health tests we offer. So if you just want to check for coeliac disease, for example, you can simply use our Coeliac Disease Gluten Sensitivity Test.
If it’s a specific single condition like coeliac disease, then take the specific test for that. If you wanted to check for a number of conditions at the same time that could be causing gut symptoms, then either our Complete Gut Health Test and Symptom Screen or Essential Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Screening Test discussed above would be appropriate.
Also, you might want to consider seeing your doctor as they can make a full assessment taking into account your symptoms and medical history to suggest likely causes and useful tests.