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?
My younger sister was diagnosed with Celiac a few years ago, I was just diagnosed (with no marked symptoms) My older sister is suspicious that she has it due to digestive complaints when eating wheat products.
My mother had Celiac, my sister and two of her daughters and another niece have celiac, and so far four of my daughters and I have celiac or gluten intolerance. There is a strong history in our family of celiac and gluten intolerance.