Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffCeliac disease is a digestive condition triggered by consumption of the protein gluten, which is found in bread, pasta, cookies, pizza crust and many other foods containing wheat, barley or rye. If you have celiac disease and eat foods containing gluten, an immune reaction occurs in your small intestine, causing damage to the surface of your small intestine and an inability to absorb certain nutrients.
Eventually, the decreased absorption of nutrients (malabsorption) that occurs with celiac disease can cause vitamin deficiencies that deprive your brain, peripheral nervous system, bones, liver and other organs of vital nourishment. This can lead to other illnesses and stunted growth in children.
No treatment can cure celiac disease. However, you can effectively manage celiac disease through changing your diet.
- Kelly CP. Patient information: Celiac disease. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Sept. 17, 2008.
- Celiac disease. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/celiac/. Accessed Sept. 25, 2008.
- Schupann D, et al. Pathogenesis, epidemiology, and clinical manifestations of celiac disease in adults. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Sept. 17, 2008.
- Hill ID. Management of celiac disease in children. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Sept. 17, 2008.
- Ciclitira PJ. Management of celiac disease in adults. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Sept. 17, 2008.
- Nelson DA. Gluten-sensitive enteropathy (celiac disease): More common than you think. American Family Physician. 2002;66(12):2259-2266.
- Picco MF [expert opinion]. Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Fla. Oct. 9, 2008.
