Norovirus and calprotectin

[pdx]

Quick question for the committee. E has been on Stelara for about 6 months, and overall doing well but still experiencing fatigue and occasional abdominal pain. She has enough symptoms that we are wondering if she'll need to switch to more frequent injections. Calprotectin post resection just before starting Stelara was 83. A few weeks ago she had a week of diarrhea and worsening abdominal pain, so her doctor ordered a bunch of tests, including a virus panel and calprotectin. Turns out she had norovirus, and her calprotectin was 276. Unfortunately the calprotectin number isn't very useful, since it's impossible to know how much of the increase was due to norovirus, and how much to Crohn's inflammation.

Does anyone have any experience with this? How long do you think we would need to wait to get another calprotectin that isn't affected by the norovirus? She has been free of norovirus symptoms for 2 weeks now.

 

[crohnsinct]

3-4 weeks is usually our retest time when dealing with outside influences.

Poor E. I am glad she is feeling better and crossing fingers and toes that it was just the nasty virus that caused the calpro increase. It would definitely explain the increase.

 

[Maya142]

Yes, I’d wait 3-4 weeks before redoing it. Poor E - I hope she’s feeling better now.

 

[pdx]

Thanks, Maya and CIC. Our GI says to wait 6-8 weeks, so we'll go with that. E is feeling much better; the infection lasted about a week, and her symptoms didn't seem to be out of the ordinary.

 

[crohnsinct]

So glad she is feeling better! No one needs that nonsense around finals time!