27 September 2016 - Food Navigator - Too much gluten may trigger coeliac disease in babies

The new doctoral thesis is based on data from around 8,700 Swedish, Finnish, German and American children with a genetic risk of coeliac disease. The children took part in a series of studies collectively known as the TEDDY project (The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young).

One TEDDY study – a Swedish cohort – found children eating more than 5 g per day of gluten were more than twice as likely to develop coeliac disease than those who ate less.

And though a popularly held belief that introducing gluten too early (before 17 weeks) or too late (after 26 weeks) is linked with development of coeliac, the TEDDY team found no links, study unit manager Carin Andrén Aronsson from Lund University said.

The data debunked the theory that optimal breastfeeding durations could lower the risk.

“Our findings indicate that the amount of gluten triggers the disease,” Aronsson said. “These findings may be taken into account for future infant feeding recommendations."

The results are in line with an Italian paper earlier this year, which found no relation between avoiding gluten at specific times, or with protective properties of breast feeding against coeliac development.

The risk of developing coeliac disease is highest for babies in Sweden, Lund University said.

The plan now is to run a large study investigating the level of gluten intake and whether there are variants in the Swedish diet which contribute to the development of autoimmune disease.

“More in-depth studies could perhaps contribute to explaining why Swedish children develop celiac disease earlier than children in other countries,” Aronsson said.

“We will expand the study with children from the other participant countries and increase the follow-up period in comparison with our previous studies, from two to five years.”

The researchers also plan to look at the addition of probiotics to childrens’ diets to find out whether it could affect the risk of coeliac.

“With more knowledge about the significance of diet, I hope it will become possible to personalise the diet instead of having general dietary guidelines as we have today,” Aronsson said.