ABSTRACT
Celiac disease, also known as celiac sprue, nontropical sprue, or gluten-sensitive enteropathy, is a very common autoimmune disorder worldwide. It results from close interaction of genetic, environmental, and immunologic components. In genetically predisposed individuals, ingested wheat gluten, rye, and barley trigger an immune response that results in inŽammation, villous atrophy, and crypt hyperplasia in the small intestine. While 95% of patients with celiac disease express human leukocyte antigen-DQ2, the remaining patients will have HLA-DQ8 (Green and Jabri 2003).
