Breaking News: Revolutionary Coeliac Blood Test Preparing for Australia Launch
An Australian research breakthrough appears to change the game on public coeliac disease testing
Hey Gluten Free Fam,
There is significant news in the world of coeliac disease research and testing. As reported in The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC News, Australian researchers say they are on the verge of developing a coeliac disease blood test that will help patients bypass the arduous, timely and costly gastroscopy that is currently the only method of achieving diagnosis.
Anyone who has been subjected to the gluten challenge will know the pain and stress involved in the process. Thanks to the work of Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din and PhD researcher Olivia Moscatelli, we appear to be on the verge of a major change in that protocol.
Bypassing Gastroscopy, Move Towards Blood Testing
Testing has been taking place at WEHI’s (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) Coeliac Research Laboratory at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. With more than 350,000 Australians living with the disease, there are still many more who exhibit symptoms and carry the condition completely unaware. This has made it all the more important to drive towards a testing protocol that is easy and cost-effective to implement across the population at large.
New clinical research mixes the blood test with gluten inside a test tube, signalling whether the T cells that cause coeliac disease are identified. In simple terms, this would mean the end of the dreaded gluten challenge, not to mention the many months of preparation and costs required for a gastroscopy.
"It's just a simple blood test, they don't need an invasive gastroscopy and, importantly, they don't even need to be eating gluten for it to be accurate," Tye-Din told the ABC. "It's really important to make a diagnosis of coeliac disease because it can lead to long-term health issues such as gut symptoms, osteoporosis, infertility, even some forms of cancer, such as lymphoma."
Statistics Underlying the Value in New Coeliac Testing Method
WEHI researchers Jason Tye-Din and Olivia Moscatelli are trailblazers in coeliac disease testing
Irrespective if someone demonstrates clear symptoms or happen to be completely asymptomatic, this new procedure would ensure that the 80% of undiagnosed people around Australia living with coeliac disease have a more immediate and seamless answer.
The figures are quite remarkable, with the test detecting the condition with up to 90% sensitivity and 97% specificity. They discovered for those diagnosed, the immune marker interleukin 2 (IL-2) spiked in the bloodstream moments after consumption.
Moscatelli told WEHI this completely alters the framework now for how the disease will be discovered for each patient.
“This represents a promising new tool to support diagnosis, especially for people who can’t be diagnosed with the currently available methods,” Moscatelli said. “We also found the strength of the IL-2 signal correlated with the severity of a patient’s symptoms, allowing us to predict how severely a person with coeliac disease might react to gluten, without them actually having to eat it.”
While we’re not able to expect this testing to be rolled out tomorrow, there’s hope that within the next 2 years, there will be widespread access to the blood test. A key reason for the delay can be attributed to a number of factors including funding. However, pathology labs across the country will require ultra sensitive cytokine testing technology, something that is not currently available to many labs.
Expert Australian Team Leading the Charge for Coeliac Diagnosis
Associate Professor Jason Tye-Din remains at the forefront of coeliac disease research in Australia. He has provided first-hand knowledge with A Gluten Free Family and detailed major breakthroughs in the field via A Gluten Free Podcast.
The same can be said for his colleague Olivia Moscatelli, who gave us exclusive insights into her pivotal contributions and personal coeliac story on the podcast.
Their work would not be made possible without the intervention of Dr. Robert Anderson. As co-founder of Novoviah Pharmaceuticals and President of the International Society for the Study of Coeliac Disease, Anderson spoke in-depth with Ben about coeliac testing progress at WEHI among many other topics.
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