The University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, together with the Jabri Lab and Pritzker School of Medicine, which has served as a leader in training physicians and scientists since 1927, has breaking news for the Celiac Disease community.
Mouse Models, Clinical Trials, and Human Research Solve a Celiac Puzzle!
According to the IMPACT April 2021 newsletter, studies using Mouse Models show key developments in understanding Celiac Disease. The newsletter explains an approach used in their studies, “Using biopsies from endoscopies in UChicago Medicine patients, they compared the production of IL-15 and other biomarkers of stress in the gut epithelium in three groups: family members of celiac patients, people with potential celiac disease, and those with active disease.”
“The HLA-DQ2 gene discovery is an important next step in understanding Celiac Disease since this variant is “seen in 90 to 95 percent of people with celiac disease.”
IMPACT April 2021 newsletter
The Model studies showed that humans with Celiac Disease have different subsets of microbiomes in the gut than those without Celiac Disease. This provides a new clue in determining whether these differences are a consequence of Celiac or exist inherently to cause celiac susceptibility. Early detection is key to avoiding damage caused by Celiac and is also a step toward finding a cure.
The clinical trials conducted using Mouse Models, combined with Human Research, have resulted in “The World’s first accurate Mouse Model of Celiac Disease.”
This provides a central element of Celiac Disease that has eluded researchers in this field of study worldwide for the last two decades. The puzzle has now been solved at UChicago, Jabri’s lab by Valerie Abadie and her colleagues, Anne Dumaine, Bana Jabri, Brad A. Palanski, Cezary Ciszewski, Chaitan Khosla, Eric V. Marietta, Ian Lawrence, Irina Horwath, Jean-Christophe Grenier, Jordan D. Ernest, Jordan Voisine, Joseph A. Murray, Kaushik Panigrahi, Luis B. Barreiro, Matthew A. Zurenski, Mohamed B. F. Hawash, Olivier Tastet, Romain Bouziat, Sangman M. Kim, Thomas Lejeune, Valentina Discepolo, and Vania Yotova.
According to an article in the National Library of Medicine, PubMed.gov: “Coeliac disease is a complex, polygenic inflammatory enteropathy caused by exposure to dietary gluten that occurs in a subset of genetically susceptible individuals who express either the HLA-DQ8 or HLA-DQ2 haplotypes.”
From the many of us who suffer from Celiac, a huge thank you! We look forward to a promising future!
Also in the newsletter is an article about The Gut-Brain connection in Celiac Disease, which many of us know firsthand. Dietitian Vicki Gainsberg also describes her twenty-year Celiac Disease history in the newsletter.
The whole IMPACT newsletter is well worth reading, and you can find it at this link.
Also, you may find this book informative. It answers many questions: Jennifer’s Way: My Journey with Celiac Disease–What Doctors Don’t Tell You and How You Can Learn to Live Again.
