Childhood Celiac Disease May Be on the Rise

[Northerner]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Mass screening of children suggests celiac disease is becoming more common, according to a new study from Italy.

As part of the CELI SCREEN study, researchers screened a total of 7,760 school-age children in eight different provinces throughout Italy. Their findings, presented at the 6th World Congress of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, suggest that the overall prevalence of celiac disease has nearly doubled over the past 25 years from about 1.0% to 1.6%.

"In our opinion, this is a true increase, because we compared the prevalence recorded in the current study with that recorded in the 1990s by a screening study in the same type of population," Dr. Elena Lionetti of Marche Polytechnic University, in Ancona, told Reuters Health by email.

The reasons for the linear increase of celiac disease prevalence during the last decades remain unclear, she said.

Childhood Celiac Disease May Be on the Rise

Mass screening of children suggests celiac disease is becoming more common, according to a new study from Italy.

www.medscape.com

 

[mikeyB]

The causes of coeliac disease aren't fully known, but one known factor is early introduction of gluten in babies who aren't being breastfed. In Italy, nice soft pasta is easy to feed to babies, and prolonged breastfeeding these days is less popular.

It may not be just that, of course. It is commoner in T1 diabetes, which is also on the increase. It's associated with some gene abnormalities, but those same abnormalities are fairly common, and are associated with other conditions.

Infantile Rotavirus infection can trigger it, but infants are now routinely vaccinated against this at around two months, I think.