Celiac Disease

What’s the Deal With Gluten?

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Gluten-free packaging is everywhere, but many people still don’t seem to know what gluten is and why they might want to avoid it.

Earlier this summer, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel even made a joke of it by sending a camera crew to Runyon Canyon in Los Angeles to find out if exercisers knew what gluten is. Kimmel wanted to mock their lack of knowledge because, as he explained, “In L.A., people are very anti-gluten, which bothers me because I’m very pro-pizza.” Kimmel wondered if people would be able to answer the question “What is gluten?”

watch the video.. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJFE1sp4Fw

For people who have celiac disease, gluten is not exactly a laughing matter, however. Celiac is an intestine damaging disease, and 85 percent of sufferers go undiagnosed.

At LIVESTRONG, gluten has been a popular topic over the past several years. We’ve published a number of articles on gluten, including “Gluten: Friend or Foe?” “15 Unexpected Foods That Contain Gluten,” “5 Reasons to Go Gluten-Free” and “Gluten-Free Is the Way for Me.”

Still, the Kimmel segment highlights that there are a lot of people out there who don’t know what the heck gluten is. To help fix this, we created an infographic to help make it easier for everyone to understand what the deal is with gluten.

We hope this infographic will help to solve all the confusing questions about gluten.  (Gluten, by the way, is a protein found in wheat, rye, triticale and barley.) Print it and/or pin it and share it on Pinterest. That way, the next time a camera crew (or friend or family-member) asks questions about gluten, you’ll be prepared with an intelligent answer!

Gluten infographic

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Readers – Did you know what gluten was before reading this article? If not, did the infographic help to explain things? Have you ever eaten gluten-free?  Has eating gluten-free helped you to feel better? Have you ever been tested for or diagnosed with Celiac Disease? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/blog/whats-deal-gluten-free-infographic#ixzz39FuOSaiS

Well-Controlled Celiac Disease Associated with Lower Lymphoma Risk.

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Mucosal damage from celiac disease is associated with higher risk for lymphoproliferative malignancies, but mucosal healing lowers risk to that seen in the general population, according to an Annals of Internal Medicine study.

Researchers examined outcomes over roughly 9 years in some 7600 Swedish patients with biopsy-confirmed celiac disease who underwent follow-up biopsy to assess mucosal healing. The incidence of lymphoproliferative malignancies, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma and B- and T-cell lymphomas, was determined through national registries.

Overall, patients’ risk for malignancy was roughly threefold that of the general population, rising to fourfold in those with persistent villous atrophy. Patients with mucosal healing had a malignancy risk similar to that in the general population.

Source: Annals of Internal Medicine

The Incidence and Risk of Celiac Disease in a Healthy US Adult Population.

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Celiac disease (CD) is an increasingly common disease that may affect as many as 1% of the North American population. Recent population-based data suggest a substantial increase in the prevalence of CD over the last several decades. Several factors are hypothesized as possible disease triggers including intercurrent illnesses, such as gastroenteritis, surgeries, and trauma. We used the active duty US military, a unique healthy worker population with essentially complete medical diagnostic coding, as an opportunity to describe trends in CD and deployment-related risk factors.

METHODS:

 

Using electronic medical encounter data (1999–2008) on active duty US military (over 13.7 million person-years), a matched, nested case–control study describing the epidemiology and risk determinants of CD (based on ≥2 ICD-9 medical encounters) was conducted. Incidence and duration of CD-related medical care were estimated, and conditional logistic regression was utilized to evaluate CD risk following infectious gastroenteritis (IGE) occurring within 3 years before CD diagnosis while controlling for other risk factors.

RESULTS:

 

A total of 455 incident cases of CD were identified and age, gender, and time matched to 1,820 controls. The incidence of CD increased five-fold from 1.3 per 100,000 in 1999 to 6.5 per 100,000 in 2008, with the highest rates of increase among those over 34 years of age (average annual increase of 0.8 cases per 100,000). A total of 172 IGE episodes, predominately of “viral etiology” (60.5%), were documented. In multivariate models, a significant association between IGE and CD was found (Odds ratio (OR): 2.06, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.43, 2.97). Risk generally increased with temporal proximity to, and non-viral etiology of, exposure. Other notable risk factors for CD in multivariate models were Caucasian race (OR: 3.1, P<0.001), non-Army service (OR: 1.5, P=0.001), and greater than a high-school education (OR: 1.3, P=0.05).

CONCLUSIONS:

 

Incidence of CD diagnosis in the US military is increasing, particularly among those in the fourth and fifth decades of life and appears higher than other population-based estimates. An association between antecedent IGE and risk of CD was noted, but the potential for exposure misclassification cannot be ruled out and further study is needed to link pathogen-specific exposure to incident CD anti-gluten antibody development or symptom onset.

Source: American Journal of Gastroenterology.