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Archives for August 2008

Are Churches Now Offering Gluten-Free Communion?

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff

Are churches starting to become more aware of the needs of Celiacs? In a typical communion, you eat the body of Christ (which interestingly enough contains gluten!), but for people living on a gluten-free diet, this is not an option.

Fortunately, I know of several churches here locally that have started to offer a gluten-free version of Christ’s body so that celiac church members are not left out of the ritual.

According to Health-Family.org, it looks like the Catholic Church has also started to offer gluten-free alternatives:

The Holy See has declared that some gluten is necessary for the substance to be considered as true bread. And thus a gluten-free wafer, in spite of its external resemblance, is no longer bread and thus is incapable of becoming the Body of Christ.

The sacraments are far too important to risk performing them invalidly.

Recently, however, another solution has been found thanks to the patience and perseverance of two nuns, Sisters Jane Heschmeyer and Lynn Marie D’Souza, of the Benedictine convent in Clyde, Missouri. Over two years of experiments they have developed a Communion wafer that has been approved as valid material for the Eucharist by the Holy See.

With a level of gluten content of 0.01% it is safe enough for consumption by almost all celiac suffers, according to Dr. Alessio Fasano of the University of Maryland and other medical experts.

Link Between Autism and Celiac Disease?

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff Leave a Comment

Worried that your autistic child may have Celiac Disease? According to a recent study, there is no link between autism and Celiac Disease, meaning Autistic children are no more likely than anyone else to have Celiac.

Here is an excerpt from their study:

Researchers compared blood samples of 34 children with autism to samples of 34 children without autism who had been referred to an outpatient clinic of the same hospital. They looked for two antibodies used to help detect celiac disease “anti-gliadin antibodies and anti-endomysial antibodies. Biopsies of the small intestine were offered to children who tested positive for either antibody to confirm the diagnosis. Each group contained 18 boys and 16 girls between the ages of four and 16.

The study found autistic children were no more likely than children without autism to develop celiac disease. Anti-gliadin antibodies were found in four children with autism and two without autism. Biopsies on all six children came back negative for celiac disease.

“This study shows food allergies often associated with autism may have no connection to the gluten intolerance experienced by people with celiac disease,” said study author Samra Vazirian, MD, with Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran.

Click over to check out the rest of the information regarding this study.

Urinary Stone Disease in Adults with Celiac Disease

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff Leave a Comment

For adults with Celiac Disease or other intestinal diseases, one of the things that you are at high risk for is Urinary Stone Disease (USD). I just noticed that recently a study was done on adults with USD and Celiac Disease, which was documented over at Jurology.

For their study, they took patients who were 18 years or older, untreated, and also newly diagnosed with celiac disease by serum markers and jejunal biopsy.  Clinical presentation of celiac disease was assessed focusing on 5 disorders of diarrhea, and deficiency of calories (low body mass index or weight loss), lipid (low prothrombin time or low serum lipids), iron (low hemoglobin or low serum ferritin), and calcium (low serum calcium or low bone densitometry). Urinary stone disease history was also assessed via questionnaire (imaging, stone excretion, stone disruption/removal), and urinary variables were measured in a 24-hour collection in a subgroup of patients.

Here is an excerpt of their findings:

Study Results

Under untreated conditions (baseline) urinary stone disease was independent of celiac disease presentation and more prevalent in patients with celiac disease than in a population sample used as a control (608 and 3,540, 7.9% and 5.0%, sex and age adjusted odds ratio 4.0, 95% CI 2.7–5.9). Excluding from analysis individuals with baseline urinary stone disease, the incidence of urinary stone disease history was not significantly different between the treated celiac disease (gluten-free diet) and control population (458 and 3,003, 2.4% vs 3.9%). The urine of untreated patients with celiac disease differed from that of healthy volunteers with 120% higher oxalate and 43% lower calcium (in 45 and 45, p <0.001). A gluten-free diet corrected urinary abnormalities (p <0.01).

If you’d like to learn more, click over to read the rest of their post!