Celiac Disease Prevalence Rising in Elderly, Too

This past week, Mayo Clinic researchers reported that the prevalence of celiac disease has been increasing significantly over the past 50 years. (I posted information on the Mayo Clinic study a few days ago.) Theirs wasn’t the only announcement last week about the prevalence of celiac disease, however. In Finland, Dr. Pekka Collin of the University of Tampere and colleagues have discovered that there’s also an increasing prevalence of celiac disease in elderly patients. Their report was published online June 29 in BMC Gastroenterology.

In 2002, the Finnish research team studied nearly 3000 randomly selected individuals over the age of 50 to see how many of them had celiac disease. The prevalence of celiac disease turned out to be 2.45%. Three years later, the researchers re-studied roughly two-thirds of that same group of people and discovered that “the frequency of celiac disease was indeed increasing” among these older people. Five new cases had developed since the start of the study in 2002, increasing the prevalence in this population to 2.70% in 2005.

“Undiagnosed celiac disease may generate significant problems in the elderly,” the researchers warn. Also, they caution that a single negative blood test result does not mean celiac disease will never develop – “the disease may also appear later in life.”

To learn more about celiac disease in older individuals, read Celiac Disease in the Elderly.

_Source:

Vilppula A et al. Increasing prevalence and high incidence of celiac disease in elderly people: a population-based study. BMC Gastroenterology 2009;9:49

Read about other recent advances in celiac disease research.

Follow Me on Twitter
Free Newsletter
Celiac Disease Forum