The Celiac Surge

A rapid increase in the global incidence of the condition has researchers scrambling to understand the causes of the trend, and cope with the consequences.

Written byCatherine Offord

| 14 min read

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In 2015, gastroenterologist Edwin Liu set to work on a clinical and genetic data set that had been growing for more than 20 years. The data pertained to celiac disease, a lifelong condition involving bouts of severe gastrointestinal distress and other symptoms, triggered by ingestion of gluten proteins that are found in wheat and several other grains. In a two-decade collaboration with researchers at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver, Liu’s predecessors and colleagues at the University of Colorado kept track of 1,339 babies born in the city who were deemed at risk of developing the disease due to mutations in celiac-linked genes. The researchers carried out yearly tests to see whether or not the children developed the disease, hoping to better define the risk associated ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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