<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
 
This is both an update to our own situation and an answer to a posting on
CEL-KIDS, relating to celiac disease`and possible connections with JRA. I'm
posting on both lists.
 
I had posted recently that a doctor thought our four-year-old daughter, Marina,
might have JRA. She had a fever (103) with severe joint pain in her knees, toes,
elbows, and hands. She refused to walk and was generally cranky, ill, and out of
it. I took her to a local pediatric urgent care center, since we don't have a
doctor here (we're only in Michigan temporarily), and their diagnosis was a
urinary tract infection (based on white blood cells in a clean-catch specimen at
the center, though she had no other urinary symptoms) plus probable JRA, since
they had no other explanation for the fever and joint pain.
 
I asked my fellow listmates for information on JRA and received interesting and
useful responses, which supported the connection between JRA and celiac. As
others have pointed out, having one autoimmune disorder increases the likelihood
of others. Several people also mentioned that their gluten reaction includes
joint pain. (Before her diagnosis, Marina regularly complained that her legs and
toes hurt, refused to walk, and occasionally refused to use her hands, saying
that her fingers hurt. Her pediatric GI in Ithaca told me that all of these
symptoms were caused by celiac, because the antibodies could affect any part of
the body. These problems, along with all her other symptoms, cleared up
dramatically and swiftly on the GF diet.)
 
We followed up a few days later with a specialist in internal medicine and
rheumatology at the University of Michigan. By then, Marina was fine. This
doctor told us that Marina did not have a urinary tract infection; the urine
culture had revealed no infection. She believed that the whole episode was a
severe autoimmune response to gluten. She said the white blood cells in the
urine were consistent with this, that they were shed into the urine from a
general systemic inflammatory response. She thought that Marina did have some
joint damage in her toes, which probably took place before her diagnosis.
 
Overall, she believed that we could control the whole thing with diet, and
suggested that one controversial arthritis trigger is the nightshade plants
(potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant). Since Marina had already tested
positive last summer for food allergies to tomatoes and potatoes, this made
sense to us. We had been eating a lot of eggplant and peppers, so we've cut
those out as well.
 
Incidentally, our medical problems seem to come from my family, not my
husband's. I am a first-generation American; my parents are Irish (Dublin,
County Mayo), though my mother has, oddly enough, some Cherokee and Swedish
thrown in. Our family medical history includes food and other allergies,
diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, autism, mental illness, seizure disorders,
alcoholism, "digestive problems," and a few other random ills. (With all of
this, you can be sure that I thought long and hard before deciding to have a
child!) But to balance this, my relatives are among the most entertaining,
talented, colorful people anyone could hope to know.
 
It's stunning to think that gluten could play a hand in all of these problems.
And yet it seems so plausible that these`are all manifestations of the same
basic inability to handle guten. For my own part, I have gained a new respect
for the role of diet in my life. And my relatives are also fascinated.
 
Sorry for such a long post. Hope it helps.
 
Trisha Stevenson