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Celiac Disease a Growing Health Concern
Reported July 03, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) – A digestive disease caused by an immune response
to gluten in wheat, barely, or rye is not only growing in prevalence, but
leading to a higher rate of death for people who have it but don’t know it.
Those are the key findings from Mayo Clinic researchers who tested blood
samples collected at an Air Force base in Wyoming in the late 1940s and
early 1950s for celiac disease, then compared the results to blood tests for
people today who were the same age as those in the earlier sample and those
who were born in the same years as the original participants.
Results showed today’s young people are 4.5 times more likely to have celiac
disease. People who were born in the same birth years as the earlier study
participants are four times more likely to have the condition.
Most importantly, people in the original group who had celiac disease but
were never diagnosed were almost four times more likely to have died since
the original blood was drawn.
The researchers aren’t sure why celiac disease is becoming more prevalent,
but believe these results suggest a need for wider testing among the general
public to pick up more undiagnosed cases. “Until recently, the standard
approach to finding celiac disease has been to wait for people to complain
of symptoms and to come to the doctor for investigation,” study author
Joseph Murray, M.D., was quoted as saying. “This study suggests that we may
need to consider looking for celiac disease in the general population, more
like we do in testing for cholesterol or blood pressure.”
Celiac disease is often hard to diagnose because the symptoms – diarrhea,
abdominal discomfort, weight loss, anemia, and others – are so similar to
other more common conditions like irritable bowel syndrome.
SOURCE: Gastroenterology, published online July 1, 2009 |
