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The increase in cases of coeliac disease over the past 50 years or so cannot be pinned on the increasing gluten content of wheat, according to an analysis of varieties of the crop going back to the 1920s.
Some researchers have pegged the rise in the disease — an immune response to the wheat protein gluten — to modern varieties of wheat bred to contain more protein. Donald Kasarda of the Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California, compiled data on the amount of protein in US wheat crops over the past century.
Although Kasarda's analysis showed that the protein level in wheat remained largely unchanged, he did find that people now consume more wheat and foods containing gluten as an additive. This, he suggests, could account for the increase in coeliac disease since the mid-twentieth century.
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Wheat not to blame for coeliac rise. Nature 503, 315 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/503315e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/503315e