Study: Celiac Disease Four Times More Common Now Than 50 Years Ago

The AP (8/1, Stobbe) reports, “Recently, a research team led by the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Joseph Murray looked at blood samples taken from Americans in the 1950s and compared them with samples taken from people today, and determined” that “celiac disease actually was increasing. Indeed, the research confirms estimates that about one percent of US adults have it today, making it four times more common now than it was 50 years ago, Murray and his colleagues reported” in a study published July 31 in the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Currently, some two million people in the US may have celiac disease.