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More good "publicity" (this time, publicity in the medical community) about
celiac disease:

The association of gastrointestinal lymphoma and celiac disease is the
topic of a paper in the June issue of the European Journal of
Gastroenterology and Hepatology (Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol
2000;12:645-648). It will be difficult for you to find this journal unless
you have access to a medical school library, so I will summarize here.

A team of researchers from Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Northern
Ireland studied 69 patients with small-bowel adenocarcinoma and 69 patients
with small-bowel lymphoma. Among the lymphoma patients, 13 had villous
atrophy (a sign of celiac disease). One of these 13 patients was known to
have celiac disease, but in the other 12, the disease had not been
previously recognized.  (None of the adenoma patients had villous atrophy.)

When the researchers compared the 69 patients with small-bowel lymphoma to
a random sample of the general Northern Ireland population, they found that
patients with small-bowel lymphoma had a 15-times-higher risk of
unrecognized celiac disease.

In the conclusion to their paper, they point out that since a gluten-free
diet is known to be protective, "every effort should be made to diagnose
coeliac disease at every opportunity." They also suggest that perhaps
"population screening for coeliac disease should be carried out."