<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Back on 17 Jan 1996 , Mitch Harman <[log in to unmask]> said: >My 78 year old mother has adult onset celiac disease, lost weight >down to 70 lb and has never regained it despite sticking to diet. >We were told that older people often don't get very good healing >once the intestinal lining is damaged. <snip> The term "adult onset celiac" intruiged me, since I have often wondered how long my son's Celiac went undiagnosed. Physicians experienced with celiac caution that one cannot determine whether a person has Celiac Diease simply by looking a visible symptoms. Therefore it seemed to me that unless one has had a negative biopsy and/or endomysial blood test, and _thereafter_ developed Celiac , it should be impossible to specify when the Celiac Disease began to develop. If an adult began to have serious g/i symptoms at age 60 and gets a positive biopsy at age 70, one might conclude that he/she probably had already developed Celiac by age 60. But if that person had been tested at age 10, the biopsy may have been positive way back then without significant g/i symptoms. I ran this point of view pasts Joe Murray (Univ. of Iowa), who said: >Bill, I agree it is impossible in an elderly patient to determine if their >disease is late onset. joe murray I don't mean this to be critical of Mitch's description of "adult onset", in fact his description helped me to learn more (and as a parent, blame myself less for not having discovered my son's problem earlier). Bill Elkus Los Angeles