I'm not sure whether this report has any meaning, or not. Basically, a study was done of cause-specific mortality risks for people living in the periods before and after the introduction of "so-called" accurate and specific serological tests for diagnosing celiac disease.
IOW, I'm not sure if this conclusion means that the study was flawed, or whether it shows celiac disease to be a benign disease, or it shows that the current diagnostic methods used for detecting the disease are woefully inadequate, (IOW, they only diagnose a very small percentage of actual cases, and/or, treatment is not very effective, because too many people cheat on the diet). At the end of the day, one would think that if the diagnostic and treatment program were effective, it would have made a difference in mortality rates.CONCLUSIONS: Mortality in people with celiac disease has not materially changed over the 25 years of this study with the introduction of serological tests to aid diagnosis.
This phrase in their conclusion is somewhat troubling:
That implies that they found mortality rates to be higher with the current serological test program, than was the case previously.The excess overall mortality we observed was partly explained by deaths from cancer, digestive disease, and respiratory diseases, of which the majority were deaths from pneumonia, supporting existing guidelines that advise pneumococcal vaccination for celiac patients.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245833
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