Why isn’t the United States screening young children for Celiac Disease ?
Gluten Enteropathy, a disease which makes wheat, rye, barley and often oats poisonous to the body, is often unsymptomatic. However, it can lead to osteoporosis, diabetes and dementia. When it does have symptoms, people are often misdiagnosed and suffer for years.
In children, sometimes the only symptom is irritability.
Gluten is found in almost everything, which means that school lunches can be hurting many of our children.
it’s cost prohibitive and fairly uncommon. the tests are expensive and the number of people who actually have it makes it cost-to-diagnosis prohibitive. and the instances of misdiagnosis are not as common as we have become more informed and educated. it is not in the top 100 health issues of the u.s. dept of health so it doesn’t get much attention.
Contrary to the other answerer, it is NOT cost prohibitive NOR uncommon.
Celiac Disease affects 1 in 133 ppl. (Autism affects 1 in 150 and the gltuen free diet often helps kids with autism, coincidence, i think not!)
The reason it goes untreated for son long is just that, it can take years for the symptoms to get noticed enough to warrant medical help and even then many docs are still uneducated about Celiac. For many years it was thought to be a childhood disease so docs who graduated many many years ago do not believe it is as prevalent as it really is.
The easiest way to test for Celiac is a blood test, however this is highly inaccurate in small children because it can take years for the antibodies to develop (thats what the test looks for) and many ppl do not even make the antibodies the test looks for (IGG and IGA deficient Celiacs).
Genetic testing is the most kid friendly method for tesitng for CD, it tells u if ur child has the genes for Celiac (97% of Celiacs do) and although it doesnt tell u its an active case or not, u can pretty much bet if your child carries the celiac gene(s) theyw ill one day develop Celiac (girls more than boys bc menstration, pregnancy and miscarraiges can trigger CD).
I agree somethign should be done, at the very least, parents should be educated about it and pediatricians should be taught to seek a Celiac test when children experience the ‘tyipcal’ issues, or even symptoms like failure to thrive.
We are slowly making progress but we are years away from a universal screening. It’d be nice tho to keep ppl from having ot wait 20 years to get diagnosed!
It is Slowly becoming a disease that is looked for. I know a hospital system in Virginia that now tests for celiac disease in any child diabetes case. Not a universal screening but it is a start.
As to your question of why, probably the big reason is that pharmaceutical companies have nothing to do with the treatment of this disease at the moment. If we could get food companies behind the research and testing for CD, it might help since the food companies have the products CD folks need.