Jessica applauded for coeliac discovery

Jessica Biesiekierski's research has unlocked more secrets of gluten and coealiac disease.


A YOUNG researcher is sending rumbles through the world of gastroenterology.


Jessica Biesiekierski has spent months behind a microscope in the Box Hill Hospital researching the impact of gluten on people without coeliac disease.


Ms Biesiekierski said previously there was no testing to see if gluten caused stomach pain, bloating or other intestinal symptoms in people who did not have coeliac disease.


“But there was a strong community opinion that it does,” Ms Biesiekierski said.


Those murmurings have proven correct.


Ms Biesiekierski put 34 people without coeliac disease on either gluten or gluten-free diets. Neither the participants nor the researcher knew which diet a person was on.


She found that the people with gluten in their diet complained of stomach pains and other symptoms while those without gluten did not.


For her research Ms Biesiekierski won the prestigious 2009 Australian Gastroenterology Douglas Piper Young Investigator Award.


“The award was a validation into the work we were doing,” she said.


“I have grown so close to the study group, and to know I will be able to help them is incredibly rewarding.”


Ms Biesiekierski is in her first year of a Monash University PhD and this was her first completed study.


The 23-year-old researcher has presented her paper to numerous professional bodies filled with crowds of eminent and, at times, sceptical gastroenterology researchers.


“Some of the more experienced doctors have been told all their careers that gluten causes stomach pain only in people with coeliac disease and then they are confronted with the young blonde thing telling them otherwise,” Ms Biesiekierski said.

Worming way out of gluten ills and coeliac disorder

October 22, 2009
Article from: The Australian
SCIENTISTS are getting closer to a new therapy for immune disorders, but many people will find the treatment, involving a parasitic worm, hard to swallow.
Researcher James Daveson admits there is a "yuck factor" in his work, after he deliberately infected 20 volunteers who have coeliac disease with hookworms.
The parasite, which burrows through the skin before travelling via the bloodstream to live in the gut, was shown to give these people an improved tolerance for bread.
"The people playing host to live worms tolerated the gluten challenge and fared better on the tests compared with the wormless control subjects," said Dr Daveson, from Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital.
More than 250,000 Australians have coeliac disease, a condition in which their malfunctioning immune system treats the gluten in wheat as a foreign invader.
Antibodies are produced that attack the wall of the bowel and over time this damage can increase a sufferer's risk of bowel cancer.
Dr Daveson said the research was based on the theory that immune systems needed exposure to foreign organisms -- such as hookworms -- to make them work properly.
AAP

Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26243565-23289,00.html

Good news for future coeliacs!

In the news today is a Spanish researcher, Itziar Zubillaga Azpiroz, from the Universidad del País Vasco, who has presented her Doctoral Thesis about genetic analysis, and how it can be useful for the diagnosis of Coeliac disease. After having studied 175 coeliacs in the Basque Country, the conclusions of the research were that it is not necessary to have an endoscopy to have the disease diagnosed, but a simple genetic study will tell us whether we have Coeliacs or not. Apparently the result of the technique (which I haven't seen explained in detail in Spanish media) is 100% certain when it comes to a positive diagnosis, although only 97% when it's negative. But surely her research will be of great help if it's applied to public in general (who knows if, and when, with the health system being the way it is).