JAMA 2002;287:1413-1419.

Celiac.com 04/12/2002 - According to a report published in the March 20th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, people with celiac disease are three times more likely to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) than the normal population. Dr. Carlo Catassi and colleagues from the University of Maryland in Baltimore compared the prevalence of celiac disease in 653 NHL patients with more than 5,000 healthy control subjects to determine the NHL-celiac disease occurrence rate. The results indicate that 1% of NHL patients also have celiac disease, in comparison with 0.42% of the healthy controls. Adjustments were made for age and sex, and the final results indicate that the odds ratios for a patient with celiac disease of developing NHL are: 3.1 for all types of NHL, 16.9 for gut NHL, and 19.2 for T-cell NHL. The overall risk, however, for someone with celiac disease developing NHL is only 0.63%.

The researchers do not feel that their findings support mass screening for celiac disease, but they do feel that selected NHL patients should be screened for celiac disease. We would also like to add that these findings support the screening of people with celiac disease for NHL, which was not directly addressed by the report.

Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol 2000;12:645-648.

Celiac.com 08/13/2000 - According to Drs. Simon D. Johnston and R.G. Peter Watson from Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, the incidence of undiagnosed celiac disease is higher among those with small bowel lymphoma, as reported in the June issue of the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. According to the researchers: It is not clear whether the increased risk of small bowel lymphoma seen in typical celiac disease also applies to unrecognized or screening-detected celiac patients. To find an answer, they retrospectively identified 69 cases of small-bowel adenocarcinoma and 69 cases of small-bowel lymphoma from five pathology laboratories in Northern Ireland.

From a group composed of one patient with known celiac disease, and 12 with previously unrecognized celiac disease, the clinical presentation of adenocarcinoma and lymphoma patients was similar, but perforation was much more common among lymphoma patients. Further, 13 of the lymphoma patients, but none of the adenocarcinoma patients, had villous atrophy at a distant site, all of which were enteropathy-associated T-cell lymphomas. According to the researchers: Comparing the small-bowel lymphoma group to our random sample of the general Northern Ireland population as controls, the odds ratio of 15.72 for unrecognized celiac disease in the small-bowel lymphoma group, clearly indicates that there is an increased risk of unrecognized celiac disease among small-bowel lymphoma patients. Additionally, (s)ince a protective role for a strict gluten-free diet has been demonstrated, it follows that every effort should be made to diagnose celiac disease at every opportunity and raises the issue of whether population screening for celiac disease should be carried out.

The following piece was written by Ronald Hoggan who is a teacher at Queen Elizabeth High School in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

There is much evidence linking untreated celiac disease with malignancy. I have recently been notified of publication of a report I have written on that connection, which is promised for the September, 1997 issue of Medical Hypotheses (1). In that report, I combine a review of the literature with an outline of a possible biochemical pathway whereby psychoactive peptides derived from the pepsin digests of wheat, rye and barley may down-regulate the activation of natural killer cells, the bodys first line of defense against malignancy. This is not a postulation that glutinous grains are carcinogenic. Humankind has been exposed to carcinogens throughout its ~ two million year evolution. But it is only in recent centuries that malignancy has increased exponentially, and has struck so many children and adolescents. This is clearly a counter-evolutionary trend when youngsters are afflicted, because the incidence should be decreasing over time, as these youngsters genes are being pruned from the gene pool. There is some evidence that has come to light since my aforementioned report, which will be of interest to celiacs and members of their families.

M. Stanislas Tanchou, a truly visionary physician, and campaigned with Napoleon Bonaparte, presented a paper to the Paris Science Society in 1843, which was a complex statistical examination of malignancy, offering evidence of increased malignancy with increased civilization (2). One of the prime indicators of a civilizing trend was a diet that included cereal grains. The greater the consumption of these foods, the greater the incidence of malignancy (3).

Dr. Chris Reading, an orthomolecular psychiatrist, in Australia, has documented the treatment of five cancer patients for depression (4). His testing for food allergies, and subsequent treatment of depression with dietary exclusion of cereal grains resulted in total remission of the cancers (which were also given conventional treatments) in all five patients he reports treating. One of these patients did die, but that was from the cancer treatment.

There are also two reports in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology (5) Lancet (6) that I cite in my Medical Hypotheses article. These reveal a total remission of malignancy in each patient. One report then recants the original diagnosis, and identifies the correct diagnosis as lymphadenopathy. In the other report, which spurs a heated debate, the original diagnosis is supported by a resected section of malignant bowel, and there can be no doubt as to the correct diagnosis.

Further, in a 1977 report, in Nutrition and Cancer (8), from Stanford University, all the children suffering from radiation and chemotherapy damage to the small bowel recovered fully from their chronic enteritis, and suffered no relapse of either the bowel obstruction or the disease. The treatment they were given was a gluten-free, dairy-free, low fat, low residue diet.

In an obscure Czech journal, a report has recently indicated that one or more of the gliadins, a sub-set of proteins in gluten, may also interfere with natural killer cell activation in peripheral blood (9). They tested the levels of natural killer cell activation in normal, and in treated celiacs, and found no significant difference. BUT, after 30 minutes exposure of the celiacs blood to gliadin, there was a reduced activation of natural killer cells.

For the last hundred years, billions of dollars have been spent identifying carcinogens. Most of what we encounter in our environment appears to have some measure of carcinogenic potential. Unfortunately, we have failed to reconcile that Humanity has been exposed to most of these carcinogens throughout its evolution. Conventional wisdom has pointed to the increasing levels of chemical pollution and environmental damage. And I do not doubt that these factors are contributing to the current epidemic of malignancy. What I do doubt is that segment of the population, variously reported at 20% to 30%, which has the HLA factors which predispose to celiac disease and many other autoimmune diseases, can mount an adequate immune response, with natural killer cells, against malignancy.

• Hoggan R, Considering Wheat, Rye, and Barley Proteins as Aids to Carcinogens in press Medical Hypotheses, 1997.
• Tanchou S, Statistics of Cancer London Lancet 1843; Aug 5, 593.
• Audette R, personal communication.
• Reading C, Meillon R, Your Family Tree Connection, Keats; New Canaan, Conn.: 1988.
• Wink A, et. al. Disappearance of Mesenteric Lymphadenopathy with Gluten-Free Deit in Celiac Sprue, J. Clin. Gastroenterol, 1993; 16(4): 317-319.
• Wright DH, et. al. Celiac disease and Lymphoma, Lancet 1991; 337:1373.
• Wright DH, et. al. letter Lancet 1991; 338: 318-319.
• Donaldson SS, Effect of Nutrition as Related to Radiation and Chemotherapy, Nutrition and Cancer, Winick ed. 1977; Wiley & Sons, NewYork, 137153.
• Castany M, Nguyen H, Pospisil M, Fric P, Tlaskalova-Hogenova H, Natural Killer Cell Activity in Celiac Disease: Effect of in Vitro Treatment on Effector Lymphocytes and/or Target Lymphoblastoid, Myeloid and Epithelial Cell Lines with Gliadin, Folia Microbial, 1995 (Praha) 40; 6: 615-620.

Holmes GK, Prior P, Lane MR, Pope D, Allan RN
Gut 1989 Mar;30(3):333-8
Gastroenterology Unit, General Hospital, Birmingham.
PMID: 2707633, UI: 89212172

Two hundred and ten patients with coeliac disease previously reported from this unit were reviewed at the end of 1985 after a further 11 years of follow up. The initial review at the end of 1974 could not demonstrate that a gluten free diet (GFD) prevented these complications, probably because the time on diet was relatively short. The same series has therefore been kept under surveillance with the particular aim of assessing the effects of diet on malignancy after a further prolonged follow up period. Twelve new cancers have occurred: of which one was a carcinoma of the esophagus and two lymphomas. Thirty nine cancers developed in 38 patients and of 69 deaths, 33 were the result of malignancy. A two-fold relative risk (RR) of cancer was found and was because of an increased risk of cancer of the mouth and pharynx (RR = 9.7, p less than 0.01, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.0-28.3), esophagus (RR = 12.3, p less than 0.01, CI = 2.5-36.5), and of non-Hodgkins lymphoma (RR = 42.7, p less than 0.001, CI = 19.6-81.4). The results indicate that for coeliac patients who have taken a GFD for five years or more the risk of developing cancer over all sites is not increased when compared with the general population.