Celiac disease, 10% more sufferers every year
Published on 15/4/2013
Those intolerant to gluten are an army that now numbers more than 135,000 people in Italy and is growing at the steady rate of +10% per year.
Several factors certainly contribute to the causes that make celiac disease a constantly increasing condition: while on the one hand there is certainly growing attention to the problem and the availability of ever more effective diagnostic methods, on the other there is certainly the fact that the world population consumes a greater quantity of cereals and that those currently used are far richer in gluten than those of the past were. And since celiac disease is an intolerance to gluten (the protein component of many cereals) that we can define as an autoimmune disease, it is conceivable that it is precisely the greater gluten load taken in by the population due to changed eating habits that has led to the current numbers of celiac sufferers.
According to what is described in the food safety atlas promoted by the Ministry of Health in 2011, the number of potential celiacs in Italy is estimated at around 600,000 people, a number far higher than the 135,000 actually diagnosed (rapporto celiachia 2011_MIN SANITA)
The high-molecular-weight prolamins and glutenins contained in wheat, rye, barley, spelt and kamut are capable of triggering in celiacs a series of alterations of the immune system able to cause severe damage to the small intestine, with consequent loss of the intestinal villi and the appearance of that flat mucosa that is the histological hallmark of this disease.
But celiac disease can affect not only the stomach; in some cases the endocrine glands, the nervous system and the cardiovascular system may be involved, as well as the liver.
Among the triggering causes, the most recent studies count countless factors, including certainly a genetic predisposition — but this does not mean "being born celiac"; rather, a person's clinical history can reveal much about their potential to develop celiac disease: this can be said of people who have contracted gastroenteric infections or Rotavirus and Adenovirus infections.
Even severe psychological traumas and surgical operations would seem capable of actively contributing to the development of the disease.