- Title
- What's in a name? 'Non-coeliac gluten or wheat sensitivity': controversies and mechanisms related to wheat and gluten causing gastrointestinal symptoms or disease
- Creator
- Potter, Michael D. E.; Walker, Marjorie M.; Keely, Simon; Talley, Nicholas J.
- Relation
- Gut Vol. 67, Issue 12, p. 2073-2077
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gutjnl-2018-316360
- Publisher
- BMJ Group
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- The global population has more than doubled over the past 40 years, supported by the ‘green revolution’ in agriculture producing high-yield grain varieties, including wheat, that are central to the modern diet. Wheat covers more than 200 million hectares of land, is the third most produced cereal behind rice and maize, and is responsible for one-fifth of the world’s calorific input. Wheat contains gluten proteins, predominantly made of equal parts of glutenins and gliadins, which are resistant to digestion, and their partially digested epitopes are immunogenic and central to the process that leads to coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition characterised by an aberrant immune response to ingested gluten in genetically susceptible individuals, which results in small bowel inflammation, enteropathy and potential malabsorption. The prevalence of coeliac disease in the past 50 years has risen to approximately 0.7%–2%, a phenomenon attributed to increased awareness and detection, as well as a true increase in prevalence. The sole and current only curative treatment, a lifelong gluten-free diet, considered central to the management of coeliac disease has also seen increasing popularity in the general population; there is a widespread underlying belief that a gluten-free diet may be ‘healthier’, despite a lack of evidence to support this notion and even evidence that it may be harmful to the non-coeliac population. This has seen the gluten-free food industry boom to an estimated US$6 billion per year industry.
- Subject
- con-coeliac gluten; wheat sensitivity; wheat; gluten; gastrointestinal disease; gastrointestinal syptoms
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1401420
- Identifier
- uon:34904
- Identifier
- ISSN:0017-5749
- Language
- eng
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