<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> In this week's New England Journal of Medicine there is a study that finds that half of celiac sufferers have fecal occult blood (traces of blood in their stools). This finding suggests that we may be losing a lot of iron, etc., in addition to the malabsorption from villi destruction/damage. Re: Liver enzymes In the accompanying editorial "The Many Faces of Celiac Disease", the author notes that a frequent clinical complication of celiac is "moderate, reversible elevations in serum amino-transferase concentrations with minimal histopathological changes in the liver." He gives three citations for this observation: Trier, J.S. Celiac sprue. NEJM, 1991: 325:1709-19 Goggins, M, Kelleher, D. Celiac disease and other nutrient related injuries to the gastrointestinal tract. AM J Gastroenterology 1994: 89:Suppl:S2-2S17 Bardella, MT et al. Prevalence of hypertransferaseminasemia in adult celiac patients and effect of gluten-free diet. Hepatology. 1995.22: 833-6 ------------------------------------------------------- James J. Hughes PhD, Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, U. of Chicago, (work) 312-702-3742 [log in to unmask] (Web) http://ccme-mac4.bsd.uchicago.edu/CCMEFaculty/Hughes/Hughes.html Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. - Horace Mann