What is Gluten Intolerance?Gluten intolerance, also known as celiac disease, is a genetic disorder that affects between 1 in 300 1 to 1 in 250 2 Americans. Symptoms can range from the classic symptoms, such as weight loss, diarrhea, and malnutrition, to latent features such as isolated nutritional deficiencies but no gastrointestinal symptoms. The disease most often affects people of European descent, and occurs more rarely in Asian and black populations1. People affected suffer injury to the villi (villous flattening and shortening) in the crypt and lamina propria regions of their intestines when they eat specific foodgrain
antigens (toxic amino acid sequences) contained in wheat, rye, and barley.
Due to the broad range of symptoms gluten intolerance presents, it is often difficult to diagnose. The symptoms can range from bone pain, "mild weakness, and aphthous stomatitis to abdominal bloating, chronic diarrhea, and progressive weight loss.1 " If a person with the disorder continues to eat gluten, studies have shown that he or she will increase their chances of gastrointestinal cancer by a factor of 40 to 100 times that of the normal population.1 Further, "gastrointestinal carcinoma or lymphoma develops in up to 15 percent of patients with untreated or refractory celiac disease."1
It is extremely important that the disease is quickly and properly diagnosed so it can be treated as soon as possible. Based on the figures mentioned above, we may extrapolate the total possible number of people in the United States with this disorder from the population as a whole (248,709,8734). If we do so we arrive at somewhere between 829,032 and 994,839 people with celiac disease! By averaging these two numbers we end up with approximately 912,000 people in the United States alone who have the disease in its latent or classic form. It is imperative that doctors understand just how high these numbers are, and test their patients when there is any
likelihood that they might have the disease. Testing is fairly simple and involves either screening the patient's blood for antigliadin (AGA) and endomysium antibodies (EmA), or doing a biopsy on the areas of the intestines mentioned above, which is the still the most accurate way to diagnose the disease.
The only proven treatment for celiac disease/gluten intolerance as of this writing is total adherence to a 100% gluten-free diet for life. Strict adherence to a gluten-free diet can prevent nearly all complications resulting from this disease1. A gluten-free diet means completely avoiding all products that contain wheat, rye and barley, including any of their derivatives.
1.New England Journal of Medicine, May 2, 1996 -- Volume 334, Number 18, "The Man Faces of Celiac Disease"by Charles H. Halsted, M.D.
2.Gastroenterology, April 1996 "First Epidemiological Study of Gluten Intolerance in the United States." By Karoly Horvath, M.D., Ph.D., et. al.
3.Goggins, et. al. "Celiac Disease and Other Nutrient Related Injuries to the Gastrointestinal Tract" The American Journal of Gastroenterology. Vol. 89, No. 8, pages S2 - S13, 1994.
4.United States Census Bureau, 1990.