Most Americans With Celiac Disease Don’t Realize It: Study

THURSDAY, Aug. 2 (HealthDay News) — New research suggests that 1.4
million Americans have celiac disease but don’t realize it, while 1.6
million people are on gluten-free diets — a treatment for celiac
disease — even though they might not need it.

The findings, which estimate that 1.8 million Americans have celiac
disease — an autoimmune condition — suggest that a whopping 78 percent
of sufferers don’t realize they have the condition.

“This provides proof that the disease is common in the United States,”
said study co-author Dr. Joseph Murray, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo
Clinic, in a clinic news release. “If you detect one person for every five
or six [who have it], we aren’t doing a very good job detecting celiac
disease.”

People with celiac disease have trouble digesting wheat, rye and
barley. A gluten-free diet can help, but about 80 percent of people on
such a diet haven’t been diagnosed with celiac disease.

“There are a lot of people on a gluten-free diet, and it’s not clear
what the medical need for that is,” Murray said. “It is important if
someone thinks they have celiac disease that they be tested first before
they go on the diet.”

The researchers came to their conclusions by examining blood-test
results and the findings of a national survey.

Celiac disease appears to be especially common in white people.

“Virtually all the individuals we found were non-Hispanic Caucasians,”
said study co-author Dr. Alberto Rubio-Tapia, a Mayo Clinic
gastroenterologist, in the news release. But, he said, the results are
head-scratching because research in Mexico has suggested celiac disease is
common there.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of
Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study appears July 31 in the American Journal of
Gastroenterology
.

More information:

For more about celiac disease, try the U.S. National Library of
Medicine.

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