Millions of people currently suffer from a potentially deadly condition that can have little or no symptoms, but is easily diagnosed and treated. The condition is called celiac disease, and it is caused by an adverse autoimmune reaction to gliadin (found in wheat gluten), secalin (found in rye gluten), or horedin (found in barley gluten).

Previously, the possible link between gut bacteria and celiac disease has been discussed in "Do Vitamin D Deficiency, Gut Bacteria, and Gluten Combine in Infancy to Cause Celiac Disease?" A 5-year European study, DIABIMMUNE, is currently underway focusing on some 7000 children, from birth, investigating the development of intestinal bacterial flora and its influence on the development of the human immune system and autoimmune disease, including celiac disease. Hopefully, this study will provide some much needed answers. Now a Spanish group of scientists has produced further evidence supporting a possible role for gut bacteria in the pathogenesis of celiac disease by investigating whether gut microflora present in the feces of celiac disease patients participates in the pro-inflammatory activity of celiac disease.

Do vitamin D deficiency, gut bacteria, and timing of gluten introduction during infancy all combine to initiate the onset of celiac disease? Two recent papers raise the potential that this indeed may be the case. One paper finds that when transgenic mice expressing the human DQ8 heterodimer (a mouse model of celiac disease) are mucosally immunized with gluten co-administered with Lactobacillus casei bacteria, the mice exhibit an enhanced and increased immune response to gluten compared to the administration of gluten alone. A second paper finds that vitamin D receptors expressed by intestinal epithelial cells are involved in the suppression of bacteria-induced intestinal inflammation in a study which involved use of germ-free mice and knockout mice lacking vitamin D receptors exposed to both friendly and pathogenic strains of gut bacteria. Pathogenic bacteria caused increased expression of vitamin D receptors in epithelial cells. Friendly bacteria did not.

The subject of this paper is one which has not been described, to my knowledge, in any of the text-books, either on general medicine or on the diseases of children. As it is one of great importance, and one which is readily overlooked, even by excellent physicians, I have thought that it would be of interest to publish a few of the cases which have come under my own observation of this somewhat uncommon disease. These cases are very similar, and it is therefore unnecessary to burden my paper with more than four, which will serve as examples of all.

We have recently reported on Lancet (1) a consistent cohort of patients affected by drug-resistant epilepsy with cerebral calcifications, half of which were cured by a gluten-free diet. All had an atrophic jejunal mucosa, which recovered on a gluten free diet. Gluten intolerance is now a recognized cause of brain calcifications and epilepsy, of dementia, of psychiatric disturbances: many researchers believe that, in genetically predisposed subjects, gluten is not healthy for the brain function (2).