It is estimated that somewhere between 1-4% of American people have celiac disease and sadly the vast majority of them do not even know it. Celiac disease was once considered to be a rare disease, and only people who were very sickly, anemic and wasting away were ever tested for it. As more studies are being done researchers are uncovering a much different picture of this disease.

According some medical experts it is estimated that somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million people in the US have celiac disease and of those people only 150,000 of them have been diagnosed. This means that there is somewhere around 2.5 million people with celiac disease who do not yet know it and are not being treated for it.

Routine screening is slow to come, as many people are still uneducated about this disease, most average people still do not even know what celiac disease is. Because it was considered rare doctors never learned much about it in medical school and because it is considered so easy to treat it simply did not receive much attention until the last 30 years.

The problem with diagnosis starts with education and awareness but the problems do not stop there. Celiac disease is latent in many people with no symptoms whatsoever or such benign symptoms they are never connected with celiac disease. Many people can go for years with celiac disease and never knowing that they have it because there are simply no outward signs.

Celiac disease has become the most common of the autoimmune diseases and yet the most under diagnosed. Many of the previously thought guidelines for symptoms as well as standards for treatment are being rapidly revised as more cases of this disease come to light. Previously it was thought that only underweight individuals could have celiac disease and yet over the past ten years more and more overweight individuals are being diagnosed with this disease.

With the explosion of incidences of celiac disease, comes the race for new treatments and the search for a cure. The good news is that the current treatment eating a gluten free diet is highly effective for the vast majority of celiac patients and on the horizon there is a vaccine being tested that may cure this disease for many of those that are severely afflicted by this disease.