Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:18:3
David Goodhue - AHN Reporter
Rochester, MN (AHN) - A disease that makes people allergic to gluten in the diet is four times more common today than it was in the 1950s, and researchers at the Mayo Clinic don't know why.
In people with celiac disease, the protein found in gluten in wheat, barley and rye triggers an immune system attack that damages the villi in the small intestines. Symptoms of the disease include diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, weight loss, anemia, unexplained infertility, tooth loss and sometimes premature and severe osteoporosis, according to the Mayo Clinic researchers.
The study also found that participants that did not know they had celiac disease were almost four times more likely than those without the disease to have died over the past 45 years.
The study's subjects were from the Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. Researchers collected blood samples from participants between 1948 and 1954 to test for the antibody that people with celiac disease make in reaction to gluten. The samples were compared to those collected recently from Olmsted County, Minn.
The researchers found that young people today are 4.5 times more likely to have celiac disease than young people were in the '50s. Those whose birth years matched the Warren AFB subjects were four times more likely to have the disease, according to a Mayo Clinic press release on the study.
The study was published in the July edition of the journal Gastroenterology.
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