Looking to get tested for celiac disease?

Conventional testing methods, such as intestinal biopsies and blood testing, can often be inaccurate. However, now you can bypass a doctors visit and test yourself for the disease with one-hundred-percent accurate DNA testing.

How does it work? A test kit is mailed to one’s home which doesn’t require needles or drawing blood but only calls for two cheek swabs. There is thus confidentiality maintained between a person and his insurance company. The results are also quickly returned with a simple positive or negative result, plus a helpful video available for download in the case that one’s results are positive. Additionally, families receive a discount when they purchase 2 or more kits.

Who may be a candidate? Anyone who has intestinal troubles, chronic fatigue, chronic anemia, skin disorders like eczema, psychological problems, child mental disorders like ADD or autism, diabetes, or any autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis.

For more information, visit: http://www.glutenfreesociety.org/genetic-testing-for-gluten-sensitivity.

Tina Turbin
www.GlutenFreeHelp.info

Studies on the genetic links to celiac disease are leading to more research and new and more effective treatment, an exciting prospect for celiacs who may want to enjoy some gluten now and then!

David van Heel, a gastrointestinal genetics professor at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, headed a group of researchers from around the world who studied the genetic maps of more than 9,400 celiacs. They have found what they term “substantial” evidence that the genes which are connected with celiac disease are also linked to other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

As a result, scientists are able to understand how the genetic risk factors for the disease operate—by changing the number of immune system genes that cells make. Furthermore, it is now understood that there are “hundreds” of genetic risk factors, which means that scientists should be able to “have a good guess at nearly half of the genetic risks at present,” van Heel wrote in the Nature Genetics journal in his published study.

We can look forward to more research, more awareness, and perhaps even a pill! Meanwhile, it’s best to keep doing our parts to raise awareness and funds for research.

Tina Turbin
www.GlutenFreeHelp.info

Key Concepts

• Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder triggered by ingestion of gluten, a major protein in wheat, or of related proteins in other grains.
• Research into the root causes indicates that the disorder develops when a person exposed to gluten also has a genetic susceptibility to CD and an unusually permeable intestinal wall.
• Surprisingly, essentially the same trio—an environmental trigger, a genetic susceptibility and a “leaky gut”—seems to underlie other autoimmune disorders as well. This finding raises the possibility that new treatments for CD may also ameliorate other conditions.

My vote for the most important scientific revolution of all time would trace back 10,000 years ago to the Middle East, when people first noticed that new plants arise from seeds falling to the ground from other plants—a realization that led to the birth of agriculture. Before that observation, the human race had based its diet on fruits, nuts, tubers and occasional meats. People had to move to where their food happened to be, putting them at the mercy of events and making long-term settlements impossible.

Once humans uncovered the secret of seeds, they quickly learned to domesticate crops, ultimately crossbreeding different grass plants to create such staple grains as wheat, rye and barley, which were nutritious, versatile, storable, and valuable for trade. For the first time, people were able to abandon the nomadic life and build cities. It is no coincidence that the first agricultural areas also became “cradles of civilization.”

This advancement, however, came at a dear price: the emergence of an illness now known as celiac disease (CD), which is triggered by ingesting a protein in wheat called gluten or eating similar proteins in rye and barley. Gluten and its relatives had previously been absent from the human diet. But once grains began fueling the growth of stable communities, the proteins undoubtedly began killing people (often children) whose bodies reacted abnormally to them. Eating such proteins repeatedly would have eventually rendered sensitive individuals unable to properly absorb nutrients from food. Victims would also have come to suffer from recurrent abdominal pain and diarrhea and to display the emaciated bodies and swollen bellies of starving people. Impaired nutrition and a spectrum of other complications would have made their lives relatively short and miserable.

If these deaths were noticed at the time, the cause would have been a mystery. Over the past 20 years, however, scientists have pieced together a detailed understanding of CD. They now know that it is an autoimmune disorder, in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues. And they know that the disease arises not only from exposure to gluten and its ilk but from a combination of factors, including predisposing genes and abnormalities in the structure of the small intestine.

What is more, CD provides an illuminating example of the way such a triad—an environmental trigger, susceptibility genes and a gut abnormality—may play a role in many autoimmune disorders. Research into CD has thus suggested new types of treatment not only for the disease itself but also for various other autoimmune conditions, such as type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Early Insights
After the advent of agriculture, thousands of years passed before instances of seemingly well-fed but undernourished children were documented. CD acquired a name in the first century A.D., when Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician, reported the first scientific description, calling it koiliakos, after the Greek word for “abdomen,” koelia. British physician Samuel Gee is credited as the modern father of CD. In a 1887 lecture he described it as “a kind of chronic indigestion which is met with in persons of all ages, yet is especially apt to affect children between one and five years old.” He even correctly surmised that “errors in diet may perhaps be a cause.” As clever as Gee obviously was, the true nature of the disease escaped even him, as was clear from his dietary prescription: he suggested feeding these children thinly sliced bread, toasted on both sides.

Identification of gluten as the trigger occurred after World War II, when Dutch pediatrician Willem-Karel Dicke noticed that a war-related shortage of bread in the Netherlands led to a significant drop in the death rate among children affected by CD—from greater than 35 percent to essentially zero. He also reported that once wheat was again available after the conflict, the mortality rate soared to previous levels. Following up on Dicke’s observation, other scientists looked at the different components of wheat, discovering that the major protein in that grain, gluten, was the culprit. From the August 2009 Scientific American Magazine

By Alessio Fasano