The Latest In Research Into Coeliac Disease Transcript

Video transcript for the latest research into coeliac disease.

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Coeliac New Zealand, GF for life.

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Voice

An estimated 65,000 New Zealanders have coeliac disease. This is increasing every year. But what is coeliac disease?

Dr Helen Evans, Paediatric Gastroenterologist, Starship Children's Hospital

Coeliac disease is an intolerance to gluten and gluten is a protein that's in many food items but predominantly in grains.
What happens when people with coeliac disease eat those food items is that it damages the inside of their bowel, and then it becomes much less efficient at absorbing food. And what happens then as you develop all sort of secondary symptoms because you can no longer absorb food properly.

Voice

Coeliac sufferers often experience many unnecessary years of painful symptoms before they are diagnosed. The treatment changes lives for the better.

Dr Helen Evans

Coeliac disease is completely treatable, and the treatment is a strict gluten-free diet.

Dr Jason Tye-Din, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne

Adherence to a gluten-free diet needs to be very strict in order for the gluten-free diet to actually achieve its goal of leading to a resolution of symptoms and healing of the small bowel.

Voice

Coeliac New Zealand is the cornerstone for going gluten-free for life. But is there a cure?

Dr Jason Tye-Din

We don't really have a way to prevent it at the moment because you're born with the genes, and you can't change those.

Dr Helen Evans

We are progressing all of the time, but we're not yet at a point where we can give people information as to how to avoid getting coeliac disease. Those are the sort of things that people are actively researching.

Voice

Research is crucial to finding better treatments and even a possible cure.

Dr Jason Tye-Din

There's a lot of research being undertaken at the moment around the world to try to improve upon the gluten-free diet, and these approaches are really trying to shift how the immune system sees and responds to gluten. The hope is that these will be able to assist people either with a gluten-free diet or potentially even coming off a gluten-free diet and having a normal diet.

Voice

Coeliac New Zealand is committed to supporting this vital research that will benefit families and individuals for generations to come.

Dr Kristin Kenrick, Dunedin School of Medicine

Coeliac New Zealand has been very helpful to me personally. At a very practical level, they gave me some funding to assist with my research project, and that was really valuable. I couldn't have completed all of the research that I wanted to do without that extra bit of financial support from Coeliac New Zealand.

Voice

Exciting new research will enable positive changes to the availability of safe gluten-free food for consumers.

Dr Jason Tye-Din

An important issue is what the appropriate definition of gluten-free diet should be. We hope to resolve this question by doing a study called the micro gluten challenge study. This study will really help us establish a safe threshold for where we should define gluten-free at, but at the same time ensure that gluten-free options are freely available and affordable to patients because if not then the irony is that you're going to compromise the diet.

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Coeliac New Zealand coeliac.org.nz.