Relationship between migraines and celiac disease?

A study looks into a potential link between celiac disease and migraine headaches.

Migraines can be a sign of celiac disease, researchers say.

Celiac patients had a greater incidence of headaches — and severe headaches, at that — than a control group in a study published last year by researchers at Columbia University in New York City.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder in which gluten, the protein found in wheat, barley and rye, causes illness. People are often diagnosed after complaining of stomach and digestive problems, but scientists believe migraines too may be a symptom.

So does that mean a migraine sufferer should go on a gluten-free diet? Not so fast.

"We see many people who have migraine, and then when they go on a gluten-free diet, they lose the migraine," said Dr. Peter Green, director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University and senior author on the study published in the journal Headache. "But before people go withdrawing gluten from their diet, they should test for celiac. Test first, then treat right."

Green and his team also found an increased prevalence of migraines in people who had gluten sensitivity and inflammatory bowel disorder. "So we think that maybe the inflammation of having celiac or IBD increases the chance" of migraines, he said.

There is no medical test for gluten sensitivity, Green said. "Some may have celiac disease and were not tested properly before going onto a gluten-free diet," he said. "It's a very difficult group to study because no one really knows what they had."

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Higher rates of migraine headaches in people with celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease

A new study claims that migraine headaches are more prevalent in people who have celiac disease or inflammatory bowel disease.

People with celiac disease or inflammatory boweldisease have higher rates of migraine headaches than their counterparts without those conditions, according to a new study.

The research team included Alexandra K. Dimitrova MD, Ryan C. Ungaro MD, Benjamin Lebwohl MD, Suzanne K. Lewis MD, Christina A. Tennyson MD, Mark W. Green MD, Mark W. Babyatsky MD, and Peter H. Green MD.

A team of researchers recently set out to assess the rates of migraine headaches in clinic and support group patients with celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and to compare those with a sample group of healthy control subjects.

A number of European studies have shown higher rates of migraine headaches in patients with celiac disease and IBD compared with control subjects.

For the study, participants all answered a self-administered survey containing clinical, demographic, and dietary data, as well as questions about headache type and frequency.

They also used both the ID-Migraine screening tool and the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6).

The research team analyzed five hundred and two subjects who met exclusion criteria. Of these, 188 had celiac disease, 111 had IBD, 25 had gluten sensitivity (GS), and 178 healthy subjects served as controls.

Thirty percent of celiac patients, 56% of gluten-sensitive patients, 23% of IBD patients, and 14% of control subjects reported chronic headaches (P < .0001).

Using multivariate logistic regression, the team found that all subjects with celiac disease (odds ratio [OR] 3.79, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.78-8.10), GS (OR 9.53, 95% CI 3.24-28.09), and IBD (OR 2.66, 95%CI 1.08-6.54) had significantly higher rates of migraine headaches than did control subjects.

Migraine rates were influenced by female sex (P = .01), depression, and anxiety (P = .0059) were independent predictors of migraine headaches, whereas age >65 was protective (P = .0345).

When it came to grading their migraines, seventy-two percent of celiac disease subjects reported having migraine that were severe in impact, compared with 30% of IBD, 60% of GS, and 50% of C subjects (P = .0919).

The number of years on gluten-free diet had no influence on the severity of migraines.

Migraine headaches were more common in people with celiac disease and IBD patients than in control subjects.

The team points out that future studies should screen migraine patients for celiac disease and assess the effects of gluten-free diet on celiac disease patients with migraines.

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Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Diet May Help Some Children With Autism, Research Suggests

A gluten-free, casein-free diet may lead to improvements in behavior and physiological symptoms in some children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to researchers at Penn State. The research is the first to use survey data from parents to document the effectiveness of a gluten-free, casein-free diet on children with ASD.

"Research has shown that children with ASD commonly have GI [gastrointestinal] symptoms," said Christine Pennesi, medical student at Penn State College of Medicine. "Notably, a greater proportion of our study population reported GI and allergy symptoms than what is seen in the general pediatric population. Some experts have suggested that gluten- and casein-derived peptides cause an immune response in children with ASD, and others have proposed that the peptides could trigger GI symptoms and behavioral problems."

The team -- which included Laura Cousino Klein, associate professor of biobehavioral health and human development and family studies -- asked 387 parents or primary caregivers of children with ASD to complete a 90-item online survey about their children's GI symptoms, food allergy diagnoses, and suspected food sensitivities, as well as their children's degree of adherence to a gluten-free, casein-free diet. The team's results appeared online this month in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience.

Pennesi and Klein and their team found that a gluten-free, casein-free diet was more effective in improving ASD behaviors, physiological symptoms and social behaviors for those children with GI symptoms and with allergy symptoms compared to those without these symptoms. Specifically, parents noted improved GI symptoms in their children as well as increases in their children's social behaviors, such as language production, eye contact, engagement, attention span, requesting behavior and social responsiveness, when they strictly followed a gluten-free, casein-free diet.

According to Klein, autism may be more than a neurological disease -- it may involve the GI tract and the immune system.

"There are strong connections between the immune system and the brain, which are mediated through multiple physiological symptoms," Klein said. "A majority of the pain receptors in the body are located in the gut, so by adhering to a gluten-free, casein-free diet, you're reducing inflammation and discomfort that may alter brain processing, making the body more receptive to ASD therapies."

The team found that parents who eliminated all gluten and casein from their children's diets reported that a greater number of their children's ASD behaviors, physiological symptoms and social behaviors improved after starting the diet compared to children whose parents did not eliminate all gluten and casein. The team also found that parents who implemented the diet for six months or less reported that the diet was less effective in reducing their child's ASD behaviors.

According to the researchers, some of the parents who filled out the surveys had eliminated only gluten or only casein from their children's diets, but survey results suggested that parents who completely eliminated both gluten and casein from their child's diet reported the most benefit.

"While more rigorous research is needed, our findings suggest that a gluten-free, casein-free diet might be beneficial for some children on the autism spectrum," Pennesi said. "It is also possible that there are other proteins, such as soy, that are problematic for these children."

The reason Klein and Pennesi examined gluten and casein is because they are two of the most common "diet offenders."

"Gluten and casein seem to be the most immunoreactive," Klein said. "A child's skin and blood tests for gluten and casein allergies can be negative, but the child still can have a localized immune response in the gut that can lead to behavioral and psychological symptoms. When you add that in with autism you can get an exacerbation of effects."

Klein's advice to parents of children with ASD?

"If parents are going to try a gluten-free, casein-free diet with their children, they really need to stick to it in order to receive the possible benefits," she said. "It might give parents an opportunity to talk with their physicians about starting a gluten-free, casein-free diet with their children with ASD."

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120229105128