A simple, cheap and effective screening test can change the lives of people suffering a potentially fatal immune disorder.
University of Maryland, Baltimore researchers taught family physicians in 25 locations to screen everyone with unexplained symptoms that could be celiac disease ? as well as those with a family history of the illness. In the year preceding the study, of 55,000 patients, only 12 were properly diagnosed with the disease.
“After the one-year intervention, they were able to find 40 times more people with celiac disease than before,” said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “In the United States, many cases remain undiagnosed because symptoms vary from person to person and because physicians have not been adequately trained in what to look for. However, a diagnosis means that patients can be advised to eat a gluten-free diet in order to stop the progression of celiac disease. If the chronic symptoms continue, patients are at risk of long-term complications such as anemia, infertility, osteoporosis or even cancer.”
Celiac disease is a genetic disorder that makes people unable to eat foods containing gluten, a protein found in wheat and other grains. Eating gluten causes the body to destroy parts of the small intestine. Previous research by the Center for Celiac Research found nearly one in 133 Americans suffers from celiac disease.
With as many as 3 million sufferers, celiac is twice as common as Crohn?s disease, ulceric colitis and cystic fibrosis combined, according to the center?s Web site.
People suffering from celiac disease often wait years to get diagnosed because the disorder causes a wide variety of symptoms and many primary care physicians are not trained to connect the dots, Fasano said. Early diagnosis is essential to prevent serious consequences from celiac disease.
