Your Most Important Question Regarding Celiac Disease

[CDGuy]

Hey all,

I have the opportunity to interview a doctor, professor, and Director of the Center for Celiac Research either Monday of next week and wanted to ask:

What is your single most important question regarding celiac disease?

I hope to record the interview or transcribe her answers.

- CDGuy

[curlyfries]

What is your single most important question regarding celiac disease?

"What can you do to help the medical community become more educated about celiac disease?"

[AliB]

"It is widely recognised that he so called 'Gold-Standard' current biopsy testing procedure misses and dismisses thousands of 'Silent' Celiacs who do not display any obvious gut damage, and the current antibody testing procedure seems to presume that because part of the 'healthy' population has antibodies, any displaying them below a certain level do not have Celiac Disease whether they are gluten-intolerant or not.

If those healthy control subjects actually had Silent Celiac, could that not then indicate that ANY level of gliadin antibodies indicates Celiac, and the antibody testing procedure should actually be the 'Gold-Standard' for Celiac Testing?

At a sweep would it not remove the need for extremely invasive and often negative biopsy procedures - especially on children, and make the Celiac diagnosis a whole lot simpler and easier and far, far less sufferers would fall through the net?

The University of Chicago states on its website that 35% of Americans carry the Celiac gene. Gut damage should not be the deciding criteria - whilst those without it are ignored and those with low antibody levels are left out of the equation, thousands of people are suffering needlessly, when all that is needed to help them is a change of diet."

You can rephrase it any way you wish but I'm sure you get my drift and I hope she does too. Will you post the response?

[LuvMoosic4life]

"How important is it that someone gets OFFICIALLY diagnosed?" - I've been on the diet for quite some time (without doctors involved or knowing b/c I dont have a doctor) and cant go back because I get sick to the point where I can't function.

"Can someone not have celiacs, but only a gluten intolerance and still be doing damage to the gut?"