Health Conditions

What is on the horizon?

There are no medications on the market to cure celiac disease today. Current treatment is limited to maintaining a gluten-free diet. An experimental drug, called AT1001, was recently studied to determine its safety, tolerability, and efficacy in patients with celiac disease. No adverse effects were found in the study group that took the experimental drug, AT1001. Now, there are studies to determine the effectiveness of this drug in patients with celiac disease that should be completed over the summer of 2008. The drug, AT1001, competes with the signaling protein "zonulin", which may have an important potential role in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease.

Another experimental drug, CCX282-B is also currently being studied to determine its safety and effectiveness in reducing the harmful effects of gluten ingestion in patients with celiac disease.

Research is also being conducted to determine whether certain blood tests can diagnose celiac disease. Since celiac disease is an autoimmune disease, the presence of certain immune system components called antibodies, can determine whether a reaction against gluten will occur. Studies are now trying to determine whether this is accurate enough to lead to a diagnosis of celiac disease. If this does prove to be accurate enough, this would mean less invasive procedures for diagnosing celiac disease. One of the standards of diagnosing right now includes an endoscopy of the intestines and biopsy of tissue taken from there. An endoscopy involves the doctor using a small, flexible, lighted tube to view the intestines. The tube is easily passed through the mouth, esophagus, stomach, and into the small intestine to allow the doctor to view pictures of the digestive tract on camera.

Researchers are also trying to discover why certain people develop sensitivities to gluten when others do not. Researchers are looking to find a relationship between gluten exposure, celiac disease and other autoimmune diseases such as lupus, certain cancers and diabetes in order to help find better treatments and possibly one day a cure.