Proton pump inhibitor (PPI) medication, such as lansoprazole or omeprazole can make the H. pylori stool test less accurate. If you take PPIs you should stop this at least 2 weeks before testing. It is usually safe to stop this medication for a short period of time, but if you're not sure, speak to your prescriber.

The test for coeliac disease will not be accurate if you do not have gluten in your diet. Make sure your diet contains wheat, barley or rye in the 6 weeks before testing for accurate results.

For women before the menopause, it's best not to take your stool test while on your period as this can affect your FIT test (for bowel cancer).

This test panel can tell you if you have markers in the blood or stool of a number of important and/or common diseases that can cause gut symptoms. Positive results can indicate a condition that may require treatment. Negative results make it much less likely that you have a disease causing your symptoms and it's much more likely that you have a condition like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

We do all of our diagnostic testing with The Doctors Laboratory. They are one of the largest laboratories in the UK and test for the NHS (e.g. University College Hospital London) and private providers such as ourselves. Whether the test is for the NHS or a private healthcare provider, the exact same testing platforms and procedures are used.

However, regardless of the high standards of the laboratory we use, no test is perfect - there can always be "false positive" and "false negative" results. The specific accuracy of each test varies:

• H. pylori stool antigen test: 95.5% sensitivity and 98.6% specificity^ref. This gives a 4% false negative rate and a 1.4% false positive rate.
• qFIT test: at the limit of detection (4µg/g), the sensitivity of qFIT to pick up bowel cancer is 93.4% with a specificity of 77%. The "negative predictive value" (the liklihood that you don't have bowel cancer if you get a negative qFIT result) is approximately 99.9%^ref.
• Coeliac disease test (tissue transglutaminase antibody test): 91% sensitivity and 91% specificity. The liklihood that you don't have coeliac disease if you get a negative test result is approximately 99.7%^ref.
• Calprotectin test for inflammation: this is a quantitative test and the result is a number. The number itself is accurate but a high calprotectin doesn't always mean there will be inflammation in the bowel. The value needs to be considered alongside other factors such as your medical history and any symptoms. Using a calprotectin cut-off value of 50µg/g, can exclude significant bowel inflammation with 99% certainty^ref.

We do not recommend using this test panel if you:

• are a child (17 years or under)
• are feeling acutely unwell - e.g. with a cold or flu or if you have new-onset (i.e. within the last few days) gut symptoms such as stomach abdominal pain or diarrhoea.

If you have a known medical condition that directly affects the bowel, such as inflammatory bowel disease or bowel cancer, then this test panel may not be useful.

If you're unsure if you should use this test panel, please contact us for advice.

If you have already taken this test panel to investigate the cause of gut symptoms, then we'd only recommend taking the panel again if you have developed new gut symptoms or your symptoms have changed.