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Celiac Adults Face Higher Risk of Sepsis

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Ever heard of Sepsis before? Me either! However, it is something that some of our older readers with Celiac Disease should probably be aware of.

According to a recent study published in the August edition of Gut, it looks like adults who are a diagnosed later in life with Celiac Disease face a higher risk of Sepsis.

As usual, Celiac.com has published a post covering Sepsis, and the potentially higher risk that exists for Celiacs diagnosed later in life:

People diagnosed with celiac disease as adults developed sepsis at slightly higher levels than inpatient reference patients (HR = 1.5, p = 0.006). The elevated risk for sepsis was also seen when celiac disease patients were compared with reference subjects from the general population (HR = 2.6, p < 0.001). Celiac disease patients diagnosed in childhood showed a slightly elevated increased risk of sepsis when compared to the general population (HR = 1.8, p = 0.003).

You can read more about Sepsis and also learn a bit about a condition called Hyposplenism by reading Celiac.com’s featured post here.

Siblings Have Increased Risk of Celiac Disease

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Back when my mother was officially diagnosed with Celiac Disease, we spent a lot of time researching the symptoms of Celiac Disease to see how likely we were also to have it. According to research at the time, it was believed that siblings and offspring had about a 10% chance of also having the disease.

According to a recent report in the September issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, it looks like family members (siblings in particular) are much more likely to have/develop Celiac Disease than was previously thought.

The researchers found that 14 percent were positive for tissue transglutaminase antibodies and 10 percent were positive for endomysial antibodies. The prevalence of celiac disease was 11 percent, of which 54 percent had “silent” disease (mostly severe intestinal villous atrophy). All affected family members carried the at-risk HLA-DQ genotypes. High-risk factors for celiac disease were the HLA-DQ2 genotype (odds ratio 16.1) and being a sibling of a patient with celiac disease (odds ratio 2.5), the authors report.

“Celiac disease is more common in first-degree relatives than previously reported in the United States, with siblings having the greatest risk,” Rubio-Tapia and colleagues conclude. “There is male preponderance of new cases, and many had silent disease despite severe histologic injury.”

In my interaction with people at Celiac events as well as reading stories online on sites like this and message boards, it seems to be pretty common for family members to have Celiac Disease.   I guess this now confirms it.

What are your experiences?  Do you know people that are related and share the disease?

The History of Celiac Disease

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Between 9,000 and 4,000 BC, in the age when glaciers melted and the earth warmed, nomadic hunter-gatherers settled down to more agrarian pursuits and began to cultivate wheat as a source of food. The establishment of this behavior, as it spread from Southeast Asia throughout Europe, is considered to have contributed greatly to mankind’s early success.

The adoption of these new foods, however, was difficult for some. For these individuals and their descendants, genetic susceptibility and the presence of wheat in the diet caused an inflammatory response in the intestines that lead to malnutrition that would prove fatal for some.

In the second century AD, a Greek physician known as Aretaeus of Cappadocia wrote what is thought to be an early description of this illness.  In this account, he referred to a condition involving a number of signs and symptoms, including bellyache that afflicted some children of his time. Some 1,700 years later, these writings were translated into English, and the Greek word for “bellyache” was anglicized to “Celiac,” which has since been used to describe the condition. Today, we know that Celiac Disease is an intestinal disorder that affects susceptible individuals when they are exposed to certain cereal grains in their diet.

Celiac Disease has long since been considered a relatively rare disease. Through the use of improved testing methods and increased awareness, however, it is now considered to be one of the most common lifelong diseases.  It is estimated that up to 1% of individuals who are of European descent have an intolerance to the grains of wheat, barley, and rye, and as many as 3 million people in the United States may be affected, or 1 in every 133 Americans.

For more information about Celiac Disease, check out our Celiac Disease FAQ.

Does Celiac Disease Cause Miscarriages?

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 2 Comments

Does Celiac Disease cause miscarriages? 10 or more years ago that would have been a difficult question to answer, but in the last decade the internet has become much more mainstream and people are able to share their experiences. I think this is especially true in situations related to how Celiac Disease affects pregnancy and the infant years of a child.

So can Celiac Disease cause a miscarriage? It seems there has been information to support both yes and no, but there are a large number of testimonials all over the internet who had a number of miscarriages and later found out they have been suffering from Celiac Disease.

One recent example I found was over at Gluten-Free Help, where Celiac Disease and Reproductive Problems were discussed.

After the loss of her daughter, Bast suffered several early miscarriages before she succeeded in carrying another child without apparent complications until the sixth month. Then the diarrhea began again. A few weeks later, when she again felt very little fetal movement, her new, high-risk obstetrician performed an emergency caesarian section. Her premature, 3-pound baby—another girl—survived and eventually thrived.

Several years and many doctors later, Bast was diagnosed with celiac disease. Could the disease be responsible for her miscarriages and stillborn baby? According to what she learned during a lecture at the 9th International Symposium on Celiac Disease in 2000, the answer was yes. The discovery prompted Bast to form the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA).

The post then gives additional examples and covers the connection between Celiac Disease and miscarriages, making for a great resource if you have some concerns about miscarriages.

Celiac-Disease.com Gets a New Design!

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff

It has been less than two months since my wife and I initially launched Celiac Disease with the intention of creating a useful resource for the Celiac community that has done so much for myself and my family.  Now after only two months we are proud to announce our first redesign!

Here is the design we initially launched with:

After collecting feedback from our readers and taking some time to make some of the changes we had been meaning to do anyway (with the assistance of Blog Design Studio), Celiac-Disease.com is now sporting the following new yet similar look:

The first thing you’ll notice is the switch from blue to green.   This seemed a natural fit as green has been adapted by our community as the official color of Celiac.  The other major change is that we are now offering a newsletter!  You can go here to get more information about our new Celiac Newsletter, or subscribe right from our sidebar!  Right now it looks like you will receive a maximum of 1-2 newsletters each month keeping you updated on the latest Celiac news, new products, recipes, and more!

Other minor changes with the redesign include better navigation through the use of tabs in the sidebar and a more prominent subscribe section to remind people to subscribe to our feed.

So, what do you think? Our goal is to make this site as useful and easy to navigate as possible, so we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new redesign. What do you like? What needs improved?  You can also let us know if you run into any problems with the new design so we can get them fixed.

Other Celiac Resources

While I’m at it, I’d also like to remind everyone of our new resource we’ve contributed to the Celiac community, the Celiac Network. You can also submit any resources that aren’t already listed, including your own Celiac-related blog or website.