If you or someone you love has been recently diagnosed with coeliac disease, you could be eligible to receive gluten free foods on prescription. Simply select your country of residence, and, if you live in England, fill in your postcode to check if your area is prescribing.
Your country is prescribing gluten free foods*. Request your Glutafin Taster Box by clicking the button below to sign up.
* Please note: local policies are constantly updated, and issuing a prescription is at the discretion of your GP.
Coeliac UK estimates that around one in a hundred people in the UK suffer from coeliac disease, yet only around a third of these have been formally diagnosed. The same research found that it can take up to 13 years from the onset of symptoms to be formally diagnosed with coeliac disease. Our own research, by sister company Schär, found that in the UK it takes on average over five years to be diagnosed with coeliac disease.
These delays in diagnosis mean that patients do not understand why they’re feeling the way that they do and can cause unnecessary stress and many tests before a diagnosis of coeliac disease is made. It also means that they’re not shown how to treat their condition by following a strict gluten free diet.
One of the biggest problems preventing people from being diagnosed with coeliac disease is that the condition shares so many symptoms with other gastrointestinal conditions. For example, both coeliac disease and IBS can cause abdominal pain or discomfort, bloating, changes in bowel habits such as diarrhoea and constipation, indigestion, fatigue and headaches.
IBS is much more common than coeliac disease, with both the NHS and BUPA estimating that it affects one in five people in the UK, and gutscharity.org putting the figure even higher at one in three. By contrast, as discussed above, coeliac disease affects one in a hundred people. It’s not unreasonable for doctors to assume that the cause of their patient’s symptoms is the more common condition, IBS, rather than the less common coeliac disease. Before making a diagnosis of IBS, according to NICE guidelines, doctors are required to first test for coeliac disease. Unfortunately, according to a recent survey by Glutafin’s sister brand, Schar, up to 1 in 4 people are misdiagnosed with IBS before being diagnosed with coeliac disease.
Other conditions with similar symptoms to coeliac disease include non-coeliac gluten sensitivity. According to figures quoted by the Dr Schar Institute this occurs in between 1% and 13% of the population. Once again, this means it can be more common than coeliac disease, and so it’s more likely to be seen as the cause of coeliac symptoms.
If you’re misdiagnosed, and your coeliac disease is missed, you will be given treatment for the condition that the doctors think you have. Inevitably this will be ineffective, and your symptoms will persist. Your GP will want to allow time for the treatment to work, and this will only lead to delays in being diagnosed with coeliac disease.
Often, doctors will work through a number of more likely conditions before they test for coeliac disease. Each new misdiagnosis, and the accompanying time taken to try the appropriate treatment, will further delay a correct assessment of your condition.
In the Schär survey, only one in four people said that their doctor immediately recognised coeliac disease, while almost half of all respondents were initially misdiagnosed with another condition. As many as one in two reported that the ‘many tests and misdiagnoses had caused them unnecessary stress’.
If you believe that you’ve been misdiagnosed and that you may in fact have coeliac disease, then it’s important to re-visit your GP. It may be possible for you to speak to a different doctor at your GP practice in order to get a 2nd opinion. If you have a family history of coeliac disease, or other autoimmune conditions (such as type 1 diabetes) then this increases your chance of having coeliac disease, make sure you mention this at your appointment, if relevant.
Be sure to document your symptoms and share these with your GP. Ask if you can have a blood screen for coeliac disease, or a repeat blood screen if you’ve had a negative test more than 6 months ago, particularly if your symptoms have changed over that period. Most importantly, you need to be consuming gluten regularly (in at least one meal per day, for a 6 week period) for any coeliac testing to be accurate.
It’s important to receive an accurate diagnosis for your symptoms. Only when you have been formally diagnosed with coeliac disease will you be able to you access gluten free food on prescription (subject to local prescribing policies) and be able to treat your condition by following a strict gluten free diet.
If you or someone you love has been recently diagnosed with coeliac disease, you could be eligible to receive gluten free foods on prescription. Simply select your country of residence, and, if you live in England, fill in your postcode to check if your area is prescribing.
Your country is prescribing gluten free foods*. Request your Glutafin Taster Box by clicking the button below to sign up.
* Please note: local policies are constantly updated, and issuing a prescription is at the discretion of your GP.
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