The gluten-free diet is our only treatment.
And we cannot easily tell whether it is working.
Symptoms cannot reliably identify gluten exposure.
Blood tests can return to normal while intestinal damage remains.
Urine and stool tests may detect some recent exposure—but they cannot tell us whether our intestines have healed. And I really don’t want to play in my stool when I’m ill.
For that, we still rely on an expensive, invasive endoscopy with biopsies.
Read that again.
Millions of people have an autoimmune disease treated entirely through food avoidance—and no simple, affordable way to confirm that the treatment worked.
We do not merely need another celiac drug.
We need a practical way to measure whether the treatment we already have is succeeding.
Keep Reading: Measuring Celiac Disease
Following a gluten-free diet is only the beginning. We also need better ways to identify exposure, understand symptoms and confirm healing.
- Feeling Glutened Doesn’t Mean You Were
- Why Do I Poop Right After I Eat? Celiac and IBS
- What the Nexvax2 Clinical Trial Taught Me About Gluten Reactions
Previous in this series: Why the loss of two Takeda drug programs matters.
Next in this series: Why nobody should have to eat gluten for weeks to prove they have celiac disease.
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