Something Has Happened in a Pervasive Fashion from the Environmental Perspective

Chella David, Ph.D. and
Joseph Murray, M.D.

Celiac disease is on the rise, and not just because diagnostic tests are improving or that awareness is increasing. A study by Dr. Joseph Murray has found that people today are 4 times more likely to have celiac disease than people only 50 years ago. An article on the Mayo clinic's website describes Dr. Murray's study:

Dr. Murray's team tested the 50-year-old blood for gluten antibodies, assuming that 1 percent would be positive — the same as today's rate of celiac disease. But the number of positive results was far smaller, indicating that celiac disease was extremely rare among those young airmen. Surprised, the researchers compared those results with two recently collected sets from Olmsted County, Minn. One blood-sample set matched the birth years of the airmen. Those elderly men were four times likelier to have celiac disease than their contemporaries tested 50 years earlier. The second set matched the ages of the airmen at the time their blood was drawn. Today's young men were 4.5 times likelier to have celiac disease than the 1950s recruits. "This tells us that whatever has happened with celiac disease has happened since 1950," Dr. Murray says. "This increase has affected young and old people. It suggests something has happened in a pervasive fashion from the environmental perspective." (Celiac Disease: On the Rise, July 2010) 

Dr. Murray also found that celiac disease could be deadly when undiagnosed.

Unfortunately this article didn't address problems of gluten intolerance or gut disbiosis, which I'm more interested in. But the fact that celiac disease is on the rise shows that something in our environment has changed. And just because it hasn't caused celiac disease in us doesn't mean that it isn't affecting us some other way.

Dr. Murray hypothesizes a bit about what could have changed in the last 50 years to cause these health changes. According to the article from the Mayo clinic:

Dr. Murray lists several possible environmental causes of celiac disease. The "hygiene hypothesis" suggests the modern environment is so clean that the immune system has little to attack and turns on itself. Another potential culprit is the 21st century diet. Although overall wheat consumption hasn't increased, the ways wheat is processed and eaten have changed dramatically. "Many of the processed foods we eat were not in existence 50 years ago," Dr. Murray says. Modern wheat also differs from older strains because of hybridization. Dr. Murray's team hopes someday to collaborate with researchers on growing archival or legacy wheat, so it can be compared to modern strains.