FAQ
I would like to know why all three of my young children have coeliac disease via my husband but none of his nieces or nephews have been diagnosed even though they have parents and grandparents with coeliac disease? Also what is the chance of them going on to develop another autoimmune disease as my middle daughter has continued having problems? And finally, do we have specialist coeliac research teams here in the UK?
Although coeliac disease is clearly in part a genetic disease, genetics alone is not enough to explain why one person gets coeliac disease and another does not. Even in genetically identical people, monozygotic twins, one twin can have coeliac disease and the other may not. Other factors from our environment may also play a role, and these could be different for each person as well. What these factors are is still mostly unclear, so we're unfortunately not able to reduce the risk of getting coeliac disease yet.
With regards to your second question: the chances for getting other immune related diseases in coeliac disease patients are indeed increased. Examples are autoimmune thyroid disease and type 1 diabetes, but there are others as well. The exact chances of developing another autoimmune disease are hard to estimate and differ greatly for different autoimmune diseases, so unfortunately, I can't give you a very clear answer.
Yes, there are researchers in the UK exploring coeliac disease too. Coeliac UK funded researcher, Professor David van Heel also looked into the genetic variants for coeliac disease, you can read about this research on the website. Interestingly, he collaborated with the team at Groningen. More recently, Professor Ramesh Arasaradnam completed a Coeliac UK project exploring the microbiome - find out more information on this project here.