Celiac sprue disease
Celiac sprue diseaseWhat if your doctor told you that eating a certain food say pizza would be devastating to your health? You might not like it, but you'd learn to live with it. But what if it was more than just pizza? What if you were told to avoid all bread, breadcrumbs, and pasta? And dozens of breakfast cereals, canned soups, luncheon meats, and salad dressings? And a wide variety of ice creams, ice cream cones, cookies, cakes, puddings, and pies? And most chewing gum, beer, canned tuna, and hot dogs?
That's what it's like for people who have celiac disease. Celiac disease, also known as gluten-sensitive enteropathy, celiac sprue, nontropical sprue, and idiopathic steatorrhea, is a disease whose extensive and variable symptoms challenge physicians to make a correct diagnosis in a timely fashion. The term "celiac sprue" has been applied to a clinical syndrome characterized by signs and symptoms of malabsorption, such as diarrhea and weight loss caused by eating grains. The term "gluten-sensitive enteropathy" more correctly defines the clinical pathologic disease caused by an immune-mediated sensitivity to gluten, a protein found in many cereal grains, principally wheat, barley, rye, and to a lesser degree oats. Most nutritionists agree that gluten is not present in rice, white or sweet potatoes, and corn.
Over 100 years ago a British physician named Samuel Gee described the "coeliac affection." Dr. Gee observed the syndrome in people of all ages, but especially in children who had chronic diarrhea, weight loss, edema, and a distended abdomen. The led to death unless cured by various diets. Many other physicians followed in the footsteps of this pioneer, prescribing diets based on rice, bananas, and lamb, which often led to symptomatic improvement of these children with celiac sprue.
It wasn't until the end of World War II that the connection between the consumption of wheat and rye flour and the incidence of celiac sprue was made. Dutch pediatricians noted that during the war, when these flours were in short supply, celiac patients improved and few new cases were seen. After the war, when adequate food supplies were restored to the civilian population, celiac disease reappeared with regularity.
Based on this clinical observation, scientist then determined that a water-insoluble protein component of these grains, gluten, was the substance that damaged the intestine in certain individuals. Not until the 1950s were the characteristic microscopic changes in the lining of the intestine documented. The arrival of techniques to obtain biopsy specimens of the small intestine opened the floodgates of research activity, which taught us much of what we know today about this disease.
Most recently, research has been conducted that describes the immunologic mechanisms causing this type of intestinal injury. The vast majority of patients with celiac sprue possess a particular tissue type, which can be thought of in a similar fashion to each person's blood type. If one possesses the right, or more correctly, wrong tissue type, there is a likelihood of developing celiac sprue....
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