Quite an interesting article was posted recently on the REUTERS website. Some researchers in Germany did a small study about babies delivered via c-section and whether or not they were more likely to develop celiac disease than babies that did not have cesarean births. The research team studied adolescents and included kids with other conditions including Chron’s and ulcerative colitis. Only celiac children had a noticeably higher rate of being born via c-section. The other groups studied didn’t seem to be affected.
What does this mean exactly? Well, the experts don’t really know and they don’t all even agree that it means anything. Much larger studies would be needed to prove that there might be a link between how babies are born and their risk of developing celiac eventually. According to the article, it could have to do with bacteria in the intestines, but the researchers really don’t know enough at this point to make any connection between celiac and c-section births. Dr. Murray from the Mayo Clinic in the states suggests that a study about c-sections and diabetes rates would be another important study to do.
Excerpt from REUTERS article:
Researchers who were not involved in the study called the results intriguing, but said there may be explanations that don’t involve the way babies were born.
For example, Dr. Daniel Leffler, director of clinical research at the Celiac Disease Center at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said many of the children’s mothers may have had undiagnosed celiac disease. Given that celiac disease can be inherited, and that undiagnosed celiac disease increases the risk of cesarean section, undiagnosed disease “would be more than enough to explain the increased number of cesareans,” he told Reuters Health.
How interesting that undiagnosed celiac disease in the mother increases the risk of cesarean section. Maybe OB/GYN doctors should start testing every pregnant woman for celiac disease. That would be better than nothing. You would think that since almost 1 in 100 people in this country have celiac, the medical community could somehow get that information to all doctors here. Then they might start looking into celiac as a possible cause for some of their patient’s problems. As always, it comes down to money. As long as there is no money to be made (by the medical industry) to treat celiac disease, most U.S. doctors are not going to test patients for it, period.
While it’s very important to get people properly diagnosed (when possible), it might be a good idea to keep them from getting celiac in the first place. Dr. Alessio Fasano from the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland believes that a vaccine is needed for celiac disease. In the U.S., we vaccinate against conditions that affect 1 in 500,000 people, but not for something that affects almost 1 in 100 of us.
Interesting, as I have it, but discovered it a few years after I had a c-section with my daughter….who continues to test negative for it with no symptoms.
I do agree though that it could just be that the mom’s are undiagnosed and since it is inherited as it states above the children will eventually develop it.
I suspect this has something to do with the children born via c-section not having all of that beneficial flora pushed into their digestive systems as they move through the birth canal. There seems to be more and more studies pointing back to the importance of a healthy microflora in the intestine to prevent celiac disease. There seems to be many theories & studies that are finding links between antibiotic use, hygiene and celiac disease.