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Front Page Of Wall Street Journal


4getgluten

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4getgluten Rookie

There's a great article on Celiac Disease on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. Unfortunately I can't post it here, but if you can get your hands on a copy it's worth a read.


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Jnkmnky Collaborator

You can get a bit more of the article on topix.net I hate the wsj and their "sign up for news" policy. <_< Great to know that the story is front page! If you ever want to find Celiac disease in the news...just google that thought... Topix has everything printed for Celiac disease as it pops up.

jenvan Collaborator

ooo, i'm going to try and get a copy. i might be able to scan it in, make a pdf on monday and send it to those interested. i'll let ya'll know.

Nevadan Contributor
There's a great article on Celiac Disease on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. Unfortunately I can't post it here, but if you can get your hands on a copy it's worth a read.

This is indeed one of the best new articles I've ever read regarding celiac disease! I am a web subscriber to the WSJ and my subscription agreement allows me to email the article to a "limited" number of people. If you are intested, PM me with your email address and I will send you the article.

BTW, just maybe I had something to do with the article. I've been emailing various Health editors at the WSJ regularly over the past few months about gluten sensitivity/celiac disease trying to get an article, but front page - wow!

George

jerseyangel Proficient

Oh--I'd love to be able to read it, too. :)

Magdeliscious Rookie

Gut Check

Belatedly, an Illness

Of the Intestines

Gets Notice in U.S.

Long Well-Known in Europe,

Celiac Disease May Affect

Up to 3 Million Americans

Mr. Martin's Misdiagnoses

By DAVID P. HAMILTON

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

December 9, 2005; Page A1

Growing up in the Midwest during the Depression, John Dryden was a sickly child with constant gastrointestinal complaints. Over the years, doctors ascribed Mr. Dryden's problems to appendicitis, irritable-bowel syndrome, kidney stones and bone cancer.

Mr. Dryden bore the discomfort into his mid-60s. Then his symptoms worsened, causing him to lose considerable weight amid recurrent fatigue. In 1998, the retired engineering designer visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. After an intestinal biopsy, a gastroenterologist named Joseph Murray identified Mr. Dryden's problem as a seemingly rare condition known as celiac disease.

Dr. Murray's origins were fortuitous: He is from Ireland. Celiac disease, a condition in which so-called gluten proteins in grains such as wheat and barley trigger an immune-system attack on the small-intestine lining, has a long history in Europe. Doctors there are trained to look routinely for the condition. In the U.S., by contrast, doctors have long assumed the disease was a rare childhood disorder.

Only in the past few years has it become evident that celiac disease may be more widespread. A report last year by experts convened by the National Institutes of Health declared that the disease affects 0.5% to 1% of the U.S. population, or roughly 1.5 million to 3 million Americans. They may have varied symptoms or none at all. The NIH estimate emerged after expatriate European and Australian researchers pushed to study the disease more aggressively in the U.S.

The story of celiac disease shows how blind spots can develop in the U.S. medical system. In Europe, a self-reinforcing cycle got under way in which patient groups spurred government-funded research, and the research led to publicity, more diagnoses and more funding. In the U.S., that process worked in reverse, as the perceived rarity of the condition depressed interest among researchers.

Lack of incentives also played a role. Treating celiac disease usually requires little more than a strict dietary regimen: Patients must avoid foods containing gluten, which rules out bread, pasta, beer and most packaged foods. As a result, it attracted little attention from drug companies. Academic researchers who saw few opportunities to develop new surgical or drug treatments for celiac disease preferred to study diseases for which innovative treatment options were needed.

"Looking back historically, the really great things done in celiac disease were all European," says Cyrus Rubin, a retired professor at the University of Washington and a U.S. pioneer in celiac disease. "Why did it take so long for gastroenterologists to treat it here? Mainly, we didn't discover it first, so it couldn't be right."

Celiac disease isn't the only medical condition to fall into an American blind spot. It took a decade or more for U.S. doctors to accept a 1982 Australian discovery that most stomach ulcers are caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. The discovery made it possible to replace expensive drug and surgical treatments with a cheap course of antibiotics. It won the Nobel Prize for two scientists this year.

While celiac disease is rarely fatal, it can debilitate patients with diarrhea, fatigue, nausea and weight loss as their intestines lose the ability to absorb nutrients. Many specialists think untreated celiac disease -- even without obvious symptoms -- can also lead to osteoporosis, anemia, infertility and cancer. The condition is linked to other autoimmune disorders such as Type 1 diabetes.

Much remains unknown about celiac disease. Diagnosis can be difficult, because the disease can produce a variety of gastrointestinal symptoms, seemingly unrelated complaints, or no symptoms at all. Blood tests for celiac-related antibodies have improved, but still produce both false positives and false negatives. An intestinal biopsy is generally required for a firm diagnosis, but even that test can confuse damage from other diseases with the symptoms of celiac disease.

Many celiacs bounce from doctor to doctor for help with symptoms that stubbornly defy treatment. "I thought I had three weeks to live" at the time of diagnosis, says Mr. Dryden, now 74. After four weeks on the gluten-free diet, he says, "I felt like I was a young man again." Last year, he bought a houseboat and sailed 870 miles along rivers from Minneapolis to Kentucky. He still takes supplements for his bones, made brittle by years of celiac-related osteoporosis.

A 2001 survey by Peter Green and colleagues at Columbia University found that U.S. celiacs experience symptoms for 11 years on average before diagnosis.

Descriptions of an ailment resembling celiac disease date back to the ancient Romans. An English pediatrician formally described the condition in British children in 1888. An effective treatment emerged in 1950, when Willem Dicke, a Dutch doctoral student, noticed that celiac children had improved after World War II disrupted flour supplies. Dr. Dicke eventually fingered gluten, a generic term for certain proteins in wheat, rye and barley, as the culprit.

During a brief flowering of U.S. celiac-disease research in the 1960s, scientists such as Dr. Rubin devised new ways of testing small-intestine-tissue samples. Under the microscope, such tissue could reveal the destruction of the tiny hair-like extrusions, or villi, that line the intestines and absorb nutrients from food digested in the stomach. Such biopsies rapidly became a standard part of celiac-disease diagnosis.

Once the scientific puzzle of what was happening in the gut was solved, interest among U.S. researchers in celiac disease faded. Its seeming rarity made it an unpromising subject for ambitious scientists. Younger academics were drawn to poorly understood gastrointestinal disorders such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, where new findings might more readily translate into innovative treatments.

Dr. Murray of the Mayo Clinic recalls that when he was a medical student in Galway, Ireland, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, diagnoses of celiac disease were so common they were "part of the medical wallpaper." After he moved to a job at the University of Iowa in 1988, Dr. Murray once diagnosed a celiac alongside a senior professor. "This will be the last such case you see, since we never see this in America," Dr. Murray remembers the professor saying.

According to the Institute for Scientific Information, a unit of Thomson Corp. of Toronto, U.S. scientists contributed to only 10% of research papers on celiac disease published from 1985 to 1990. Scientists in the United Kingdom and Italy contributed to 38% of the papers.

As U.S. celiac research dwindled, so did medical awareness. The assumption that celiac disease rarely occurred in the U.S. became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as fewer doctors considered it as an explanation for illnesses.

Mike Martin and his wife, Debbie, in July 2004.

Mike Martin, a Navy veteran in New Jersey, began to suffer in 1977 from stomach problems and diarrhea that forced him to quit his job as a delivery worker. He lost 40 pounds and began visiting doctors, who either found nothing wrong or ascribed his problems to irritable-bowel syndrome, a catch-all diagnosis for gastrointestinal distress. Even after Mr. Martin developed dermatitis herpetiformis, a rare skin condition linked to celiac disease, no doctor considered a celiac diagnosis until two years ago, when by chance he visited a gastrointestinal specialist trained in India.

Mr. Martin, now 51, never returned to work and is supported by his wife, Debbie. He has regained some weight on a gluten-free diet but still can't properly digest many foods.

Meanwhile, European researchers advanced celiac studies. Alessio Fasano, an Italian researcher formerly at the University of Naples, says celiac patients groups "helped create a political and health-care agenda" to promote research into the disease. He also says European countries that have national health-care systems pay more attention than the U.S. to preventing diseases through early diagnosis.

In the 1970s and 1980s, new blood tests for celiac-related antibodies let researchers screen larger groups of schoolchildren and blood donors. Those tests showed that celiac disease was more common than thought in many European countries. By the 1990s, researchers concluded that celiac disease might affect as much as 1% of many countries' populations.

European scientists, with help from a U.S. group, eventually pinpointed a genetic variant common to celiacs and began to unravel the biochemical events that lead the body to mobilize against gluten and attack intestinal tissue. Health authorities stepped up efforts to make family doctors aware of the condition.

The new thinking made little headway in the U.S. at first. A 1994 Mayo Clinic study reinforced U.S. complacency by suggesting that celiac disease affected only one American in 5,000. However, the researchers hadn't done any blood testing. The figure reflected only cases in one Minnesota county diagnosed through classical gastrointestinal symptoms.

A handful of foreign scientists who moved to the U.S. to take advantage of greater academic freedom and better career opportunities began to press their contention that celiac disease was more common in the U.S. Dr. Fasano, who moved to the University of Maryland in 1993, published a 1996 paper in a Norwegian journal titled, "Where Have All the American Celiacs Gone?" In the mid-to-late 1990s, the NIH awarded a few grants to study prevalence of the disease.

Susan Goldstein, a 61-year-old graphic designer in White Plains, N.Y., was unexpectedly rejected as a blood donor in 1991 when tests showed her to be severely anemic. A visit to a Columbia University hematologist led her to Dr. Green, an Australian doctor who had schooled his fellow specialists to look for celiac disease.

Ms. Goldstein turned out to be a celiac. So did two of her three adult children, neither of whom exhibited classical gastrointestinal symptoms. All three have been on gluten-free diets since. Ms. Goldstein helped found a local celiac-support group and raised funds for a celiac research center at Columbia, which Dr. Green now directs.

In 2003, researchers led by Dr. Fasano reported that one American in 133 has celiac disease, after screening more than 13,000 people. The following year, the NIH held its "consensus conference" to lay out the state of the art in the disease and help settle controversy. It produced the estimate that as many as one in 100 Americans has the condition.

Nonetheless, celiac disease remains today "kind of an orphan, even though it's a very common disease," says Charles Elson, a gastroenterologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham who chaired the NIH conference. "There are no pharmaceutical or biotech companies pushing a product and calling on doctors."

Write to David P. Hamilton at david.hamilton@wsj.com

Judyin Philly Enthusiast
Gut Check

Belatedly, an Illness

Of the Intestines

Gets Notice in U.S.

Long Well-Known in Europe,

Celiac Disease May Affect

Up to 3 Million Americans

Mr. Martin's Misdiagnoses

By DAVID P. HAMILTON

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

December 9, 2005; Page A1

Growing up in the Midwest during the Depression, John Dryden was a sickly child with constant gastrointestinal complaints. Over the years, doctors ascribed Mr. Dryden's problems to appendicitis, irritable-bowel syndrome, kidney stones and bone cancer.

Mr. Dryden bore the discomfort into his mid-60s. Then his symptoms worsened, causing him to lose considerable weight amid recurrent fatigue. In 1998, the retired engineering designer visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. After an intestinal biopsy, a gastroenterologist named Joseph Murray identified Mr. Dryden's problem as a seemingly rare condition known as celiac disease.

Dr. Murray's origins were fortuitous: He is from Ireland. Celiac disease, a condition in which so-called gluten proteins in grains such as wheat and barley trigger an immune-system attack on the small-intestine lining, has a long history in Europe. Doctors there are trained to look routinely for the condition. In the U.S., by contrast, doctors have long assumed the disease was a rare childhood disorder.

Only in the past few years has it become evident that celiac disease may be more widespread. A report last year by experts convened by the National Institutes of Health declared that the disease affects 0.5% to 1% of the U.S. population, or roughly 1.5 million to 3 million Americans. They may have varied symptoms or none at all. The NIH estimate emerged after expatriate European and Australian researchers pushed to study the disease more aggressively in the U.S.

The story of celiac disease shows how blind spots can develop in the U.S. medical system. In Europe, a self-reinforcing cycle got under way in which patient groups spurred government-funded research, and the research led to publicity, more diagnoses and more funding. In the U.S., that process worked in reverse, as the perceived rarity of the condition depressed interest among researchers.

Lack of incentives also played a role. Treating celiac disease usually requires little more than a strict dietary regimen: Patients must avoid foods containing gluten, which rules out bread, pasta, beer and most packaged foods. As a result, it attracted little attention from drug companies. Academic researchers who saw few opportunities to develop new surgical or drug treatments for celiac disease preferred to study diseases for which innovative treatment options were needed.

"Looking back historically, the really great things done in celiac disease were all European," says Cyrus Rubin, a retired professor at the University of Washington and a U.S. pioneer in celiac disease. "Why did it take so long for gastroenterologists to treat it here? Mainly, we didn't discover it first, so it couldn't be right."

Celiac disease isn't the only medical condition to fall into an American blind spot. It took a decade or more for U.S. doctors to accept a 1982 Australian discovery that most stomach ulcers are caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. The discovery made it possible to replace expensive drug and surgical treatments with a cheap course of antibiotics. It won the Nobel Prize for two scientists this year.

While celiac disease is rarely fatal, it can debilitate patients with diarrhea, fatigue, nausea and weight loss as their intestines lose the ability to absorb nutrients. Many specialists think untreated celiac disease -- even without obvious symptoms -- can also lead to osteoporosis, anemia, infertility and cancer. The condition is linked to other autoimmune disorders such as Type 1 diabetes.

Much remains unknown about celiac disease. Diagnosis can be difficult, because the disease can produce a variety of gastrointestinal symptoms, seemingly unrelated complaints, or no symptoms at all. Blood tests for celiac-related antibodies have improved, but still produce both false positives and false negatives. An intestinal biopsy is generally required for a firm diagnosis, but even that test can confuse damage from other diseases with the symptoms of celiac disease.

Many celiacs bounce from doctor to doctor for help with symptoms that stubbornly defy treatment. "I thought I had three weeks to live" at the time of diagnosis, says Mr. Dryden, now 74. After four weeks on the gluten-free diet, he says, "I felt like I was a young man again." Last year, he bought a houseboat and sailed 870 miles along rivers from Minneapolis to Kentucky. He still takes supplements for his bones, made brittle by years of celiac-related osteoporosis.

A 2001 survey by Peter Green and colleagues at Columbia University found that U.S. celiacs experience symptoms for 11 years on average before diagnosis.

Descriptions of an ailment resembling celiac disease date back to the ancient Romans. An English pediatrician formally described the condition in British children in 1888. An effective treatment emerged in 1950, when Willem Dicke, a Dutch doctoral student, noticed that celiac children had improved after World War II disrupted flour supplies. Dr. Dicke eventually fingered gluten, a generic term for certain proteins in wheat, rye and barley, as the culprit.

During a brief flowering of U.S. celiac-disease research in the 1960s, scientists such as Dr. Rubin devised new ways of testing small-intestine-tissue samples. Under the microscope, such tissue could reveal the destruction of the tiny hair-like extrusions, or villi, that line the intestines and absorb nutrients from food digested in the stomach. Such biopsies rapidly became a standard part of celiac-disease diagnosis.

Once the scientific puzzle of what was happening in the gut was solved, interest among U.S. researchers in celiac disease faded. Its seeming rarity made it an unpromising subject for ambitious scientists. Younger academics were drawn to poorly understood gastrointestinal disorders such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, where new findings might more readily translate into innovative treatments.

Dr. Murray of the Mayo Clinic recalls that when he was a medical student in Galway, Ireland, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, diagnoses of celiac disease were so common they were "part of the medical wallpaper." After he moved to a job at the University of Iowa in 1988, Dr. Murray once diagnosed a celiac alongside a senior professor. "This will be the last such case you see, since we never see this in America," Dr. Murray remembers the professor saying.

According to the Institute for Scientific Information, a unit of Thomson Corp. of Toronto, U.S. scientists contributed to only 10% of research papers on celiac disease published from 1985 to 1990. Scientists in the United Kingdom and Italy contributed to 38% of the papers.

As U.S. celiac research dwindled, so did medical awareness. The assumption that celiac disease rarely occurred in the U.S. became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as fewer doctors considered it as an explanation for illnesses.

Mike Martin and his wife, Debbie, in July 2004.

Mike Martin, a Navy veteran in New Jersey, began to suffer in 1977 from stomach problems and diarrhea that forced him to quit his job as a delivery worker. He lost 40 pounds and began visiting doctors, who either found nothing wrong or ascribed his problems to irritable-bowel syndrome, a catch-all diagnosis for gastrointestinal distress. Even after Mr. Martin developed dermatitis herpetiformis, a rare skin condition linked to celiac disease, no doctor considered a celiac diagnosis until two years ago, when by chance he visited a gastrointestinal specialist trained in India.

Mr. Martin, now 51, never returned to work and is supported by his wife, Debbie. He has regained some weight on a gluten-free diet but still can't properly digest many foods.

Meanwhile, European researchers advanced celiac studies. Alessio Fasano, an Italian researcher formerly at the University of Naples, says celiac patients groups "helped create a political and health-care agenda" to promote research into the disease. He also says European countries that have national health-care systems pay more attention than the U.S. to preventing diseases through early diagnosis.

In the 1970s and 1980s, new blood tests for celiac-related antibodies let researchers screen larger groups of schoolchildren and blood donors. Those tests showed that celiac disease was more common than thought in many European countries. By the 1990s, researchers concluded that celiac disease might affect as much as 1% of many countries' populations.

European scientists, with help from a U.S. group, eventually pinpointed a genetic variant common to celiacs and began to unravel the biochemical events that lead the body to mobilize against gluten and attack intestinal tissue. Health authorities stepped up efforts to make family doctors aware of the condition.

The new thinking made little headway in the U.S. at first. A 1994 Mayo Clinic study reinforced U.S. complacency by suggesting that celiac disease affected only one American in 5,000. However, the researchers hadn't done any blood testing. The figure reflected only cases in one Minnesota county diagnosed through classical gastrointestinal symptoms.

A handful of foreign scientists who moved to the U.S. to take advantage of greater academic freedom and better career opportunities began to press their contention that celiac disease was more common in the U.S. Dr. Fasano, who moved to the University of Maryland in 1993, published a 1996 paper in a Norwegian journal titled, "Where Have All the American Celiacs Gone?" In the mid-to-late 1990s, the NIH awarded a few grants to study prevalence of the disease.

Susan Goldstein, a 61-year-old graphic designer in White Plains, N.Y., was unexpectedly rejected as a blood donor in 1991 when tests showed her to be severely anemic. A visit to a Columbia University hematologist led her to Dr. Green, an Australian doctor who had schooled his fellow specialists to look for celiac disease.

Ms. Goldstein turned out to be a celiac. So did two of her three adult children, neither of whom exhibited classical gastrointestinal symptoms. All three have been on gluten-free diets since. Ms. Goldstein helped found a local celiac-support group and raised funds for a celiac research center at Columbia, which Dr. Green now directs.

In 2003, researchers led by Dr. Fasano reported that one American in 133 has celiac disease, after screening more than 13,000 people. The following year, the NIH held its "consensus conference" to lay out the state of the art in the disease and help settle controversy. It produced the estimate that as many as one in 100 Americans has the condition.

Nonetheless, celiac disease remains today "kind of an orphan, even though it's a very common disease," says Charles Elson, a gastroenterologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham who chaired the NIH conference. "There are no pharmaceutical or biotech companies pushing a product and calling on doctors."

Write to David P. Hamilton at david.hamilton@wsj.com

THANKS SO MUCH for the post.

Judy in Philly


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Emme999 Enthusiast

Thank you for posting that ! :) :)

- Michelle :wub:

jenvan Collaborator

What a fascinating article...interesting info on how diseases get researched and getting funding and a reminder of how drug companies do help influence that. This article being in the WSJ is really encouraging to me--we are definitely at the forefront in a break of awareness...it should only grow from here!

bluelotus Contributor

This is great. Still wished that they had mentioned the obesity link to celiac disease, and so many Americans are overweight. It is thought that only a few celiacs go through the extreme weight loss and being an overweight celiac is more common. Then again, no article would be perfect, so a big kudos to those that pushed WSJ for the article as well as the pretty-well-informed author.

bluelotus Contributor

I just wrote the author, thanking him over and over as well as giving a couple suggestions on other issues to cover related to celiac disease if he were to publish a follow up article (ex. gene testing, overweight celiacs, other linked diseases/symptoms that seem relatively common). Again though, much kudos to him for even touching the complicated topic!

Canadian Karen Community Regular

Awesome!

And George, thank you for pushing and pushing for us - you probably are the force behind that article and you deserve kudos!!!!

Karen

jenvan Collaborator

Yeah, George, as I mentioned, I think its a big deal--great job influencing! I also wrote the writer and gave him props :)

jerseyangel Proficient

What a great article--many thanks for posting it :)

Nevadan Contributor

For those interested, as of 1:00p PST this article is the "Most Viewed" and "Most Emailed" article in today's WSJ!!

I'm glad to read that a lot of you are emailing the reporter who wrote the article - there's nothing better than postive feedback.

WOW! :)

George

bluelotus Contributor
For those interested, as of 1:00p PST this article is the "Most Viewed" and "Most Emailed" article in today's WSJ!!

I'm glad to read that a lot of you are emailing the reporter who wrote the article - there's nothing better than postive feedback.

WOW! :)

George

Yep, George, you are the personification of the old adage that one person can make a difference. Again, kudos to your efforts.

Rachel--24 Collaborator

YAY!! :D

I was hoping by the time I got off work someone would have posted the article. Thanks!!

That was a great article. Also thanks to George for your efforts. :)

celiac3270 Collaborator

There are actually two articles. Both are available online:

I hope you are doing well. Two articles about celiac disease appeared in the Wall Street Journal Friday, December 9, 2005! One of the articles was featured on the FRONT PAGE!!! Both articles will be available to non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to seven days after it is e-mailed. You will want to review the articles ASAP to ensure viewing capability.

The links are below for your convenience (CTRL + Click to follow link)…

WSJ.com - Belatedly, an Illness Of the Intestines Gets Notice in U.S.*

This article is on the front page!

WSJ.com - Not So Special

This article is on page W8.

All the best,

Cynthia

Cynthia Beckman

Director of Development

Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University

161 Fort Washington Avenue

Suite 645

New York, NY 10032

Tel (212) 342-4529

Cell (646) 812-1212

Fax (212) 305-6443

www.celiacdiseasecenter.org

Sorry, the links didn't come out in the copy and paste. Here are the links in order:

Open Original Shared Link

Open Original Shared Link

tarnalberry Community Regular

I think that's a fabulous way to get the public to actually read the article - attracts the "theory conspiracy"-type curiosity in many people, not to mention nudging into the area of patriotism in the comparison of the US versus Europe. (Given the recent news stories, I won't even go there! ;-) )

Good to see it's getting out there!

Guest barbara3675

Great article, just wrote my thanks to the author too. Barbara

Great article, just wrote my thanks to the author too. Barbara

aikiducky Apprentice

Did you all see the figures for how common celiac is in a few countries, on the actual article on the website? Celiac is more common both in Finland and in Italy than in Ireland... I bet it's fairly common elsewhere in the Mediterranean as well. Just to say, that only irish people get celiac is really a myth...

Thank you so much for posting the article, and for pushing for it in the first place!

Pauliina

Nevadan Contributor

For what it's worth, as of 10:00p PST Sunday Dec 11 according to the WSJOnline statistics, this celiac article from Friday is the number 3 "Most emailed" article of all articles within the last week and number 7 for all articles within the last month. The reporter seems to have attracted lots of interest in celiac - hopes it helps raise the awareness.

George

ms-sillyak-screwed Enthusiast

Thanx for posting and all the links!

I printed it and I'm taking w/me to my gastro doc apt today...

We made it front page WSJ lets celebrate!

debmidge Rising Star

Hi All :)

My husband is "Mr. Martin" and I am sure the WSJ editors in NYC cut some addtional info about him out as his interview with the author was about 40 minutes long. As many of you know, Mike has been plagued with other health problems over the years that stem from his misdiagnosed celiac.

We were very excited to be included in this story and we were caught off guard that it was finally published on 12/9 (the interview happened over a month ago). The photo is from our 2004 25th Wedding Anniversary.

Deb :D

Guest nini

very cool!

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      You should also have her checked for vitamin deficiencies.   "Iodine's presence in the diet can contribute positively to hair strength and elasticity by maintaining hair follicle cycling and supporting the synthesis of hair shaft components like keratin. Keratin is strong and won't dissolve in diluted acids, alkalines, solvents, or water" "Keratosis pilaris is a benign skin condition characterized by small bumps around hair follicles. It is caused by excess keratin, a protein that forms hair, nails, and skin. Iodine is not directly related to keratosis pilaris, but certain foods can help improve it" It could be deficiency in iodine may be causing the keratosis Polaris.  Insufficient iodine intake affects healing, intellegence skin and nails. The average intake of iodine fell 50% from 1970 to now.  A Medium Urinary Iodine Concentration test will indicate intake.  TSH and T4 will not show iodine intake deficiency until damage is being done. Most newly diagnosed Celiac Disease and other autoimmune diseases are deficient in vitamin D when diagnosed.  Other than bone growth, vitamin D is essential for mental health and the immune system.
    • gregoryC
      Just finished my second celebrity cruise. My first was on one of their oldest ships, it was awesome! Now we have sailed on the edge class. Wow! Not only do they have so many gluten-free options but the selection is mind blowing! Any given day you will have between 5 to 7 different gluten-free cakes to try. Yes that is right, one day at the coffee shop I had to choose between 5 gluten-free cakes not including the several puddings on display. So they gave me a small piece of each. 2 were great, 2 were just good, and 1 I did not enjoy. But never have I had the tough decision of which cake to eat?  These selections are from their normal options available for all guest. In the main dining room they always surprised me with some awesome desserts.  In my opinion the best pizza was on the Millennium class and best buffet on the Edge class. Although these two ship vary in size they are both consistent and serving high quality food from the main dinning room. The edge class gives you 4 “main” dining rooms (all included). I was unsure how this would work with my gluten-free diet? It worked great! I was able to order or see the next night’s menu for each of the four dinning venues finding that very little to no modifications needed to be made due to their extensive gluten free options.  The Millennium and Edge class ships provide the best gluten-free options from any of the cruise lines I have sailed with. You will find a larger selection and options on the edge class ships, however you will not be disappointed with the smaller Millennium class. Which is still my favorite cruise ship to date.   
    • trents
      Welcome to the forum, @ABP! We can't comment on the test numbers you give as you didn't include the range for negative. Different labs use different units and different ranges. There are no industry standards for this so we need more information. If your daughter doesn't have celiac disease she still could have NCGS (Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity) which some experts believe can be a precursor to celiac disease and is 10x more common than celiac disease. However, there is no test for it yet but it does share many of the same symptoms with celiac disease. Both require complete abstinence from gluten.  It is seldom the case during testing where all tests are positive, even for those who do have celiac disease. This is no different than when diagnosing other medical conditions and that is why it is typical to run numbers of tests that come at things from different angles when seeking to arrive at a diagnosis. It seems like you are at the point, since you have had both blood antibody testing and endoscopy/biopsy done, that you need to trial the gluten free diet. If her symptoms improve then you know all you need to know, whatever you label you want to give it. But given that apparently at least one celiac antibody blood test is positive and she has classic celiac symptoms such as slow growth, constipation and bloating, my money would be on celiac disease as opposed to NCGS.
    • ABP
      My nine-year-old daughter has suffered with severe constipation and bloating for years as well as frequent mouth sores, and keratosis Polaris on her arms. She also has recently decreased on her growth curve her % going down gradually.  After seeing a gastroenterologist, her IgG GLIADIN (DEAMIDATED) AB (IGG) was 22.4 while her IGA was normal. Her TISSUE TRANSGLUTAMINASE AB, IGA was 11.9.  Most recently her genetic test for celiac was positive.  After an endoscopy her tissue showed inflammation of the tissue as well as , increased intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) but there was no blunting of the change in the villi.    It seems that every result that we get one out of two things positive rather than all leading to an inconclusive diagnosis. While we do have another appointment with the doctor to go over the results. I'm curious based on this information what others think.    I would hate to have her eliminate gluten if not necessary- but also don't want to not remove if it is necessary.    Signed Confused and Concerned Mama
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