Sónia Gonçalves Pereira attended the scientific event ‘Beyond Celiac Research Summit’, on October 26, at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in the United States of America, to present the latest results of the CeliAct (TIV) project , in which she is the principal investigator and whose goal is to understand the development of celiac disease and find alternative treatments to gluten-free diet.
In the event dedicated to the dissemination of global advancements in celiac disease, the CeliAct (TIV) project stood out for its innovative approach, by revealing that “the intestinal microbiome of patients is more similar to their family members than to other patients, which shows that it is influenced more by environmental factors than by disease”.
The results of two years of CeliAct (TIV), allowed the team to discover also that even with these similarities between relatives, “celiac patients present a lower amount of bacteria that degrade the dietary fiber, possibly due to the reduced consumption of fiber, imposed by the gluten-free diet they are required to follow as the only treatment currently available for this disease”.
The team also concluded that it is important to increase dietary fiber consumption, since “the bacterial species that degrade fiber, which are found in smaller quantities in patients, are associated with lower inflammatory processes”, which “may be relevant for the food industry to consider in developing new gluten-free products suitable for these patients”.
Until 2026, the team will further explore the effect of bacteria isolated from patients and their families on the degradation of gliadin, the most commonly associated gluten protein in triggering the autoimmune response typical of this disease, in order to “find out some biomarker or therapeutic target for new alternatives of diagnosis and treatment”, and not only “a gluten-free diet, which has several impacts on the quality of life of these patients, as the permanent care with gluten contamination in any meal, that often prevents them from going to social events without safe offers”.
“Besides, according to the data we found in the first phase of the project, the gluten-free diet increases the risk for other diseases and maintains inflammatory processes globally harmful to your health status”, reveal Sónia Gonçalves Pereira.
This project counts on the collaboration of Harvard Medical School (USA), Massachusetts General Hospital (USA), Tampere University (Finland) and Chemistry Center of Coimbra (Portugal).
Find out more information:
