Understanding Coeliac Disease

Coeliac disease is an increasingly common chronic condition affecting all ages. International research indicates there could be up to 100,000 people in NZ with coeliac disease and of those 30,000 are likely to be children under the age of 18. However, a large proportion of those are unaware they have the condition.

A strict, lifelong gluten-free diet is the mainstay of treatment currently. Although the gluten-free diet is effective, there are recognised challenges, particularly from a social perspective, and especially during teenage years.

• Increase diagnosis rate of coeliac disease
• Identify alternative treatments to the gluten-free diet
• Identify long-term health impacts of coeliac disease
• Find a cure

The biggest obstacle in getting a coeliac drug to market is recruiting enough patients around the world to participate in clinical trials. We need your help to make better treatments and a cure for coeliac disease a reality. iQualifyCeliac is a screening software, developed by Celiac Disease Foundation that allows you to join a register so Coeliac New Zealand can tell you about clinical trials or studies happening in New Zealand.

Coeliac NZ has partnered with Celiac Disease Foundation to set up a Patient Registry that allows us to capture information about people living with coeliac disease in New Zealand for the first time.

The long-term benefit of collaborating with other coeliac organisations around the world is to lower the cost of drug development; and working together with our community, to ensure that qualified coeliac disease patients enrol in and are satisfied with their participation in clinical trials and studies. For researchers, having more countries participate in the iQualifyCeliac platform allows the potential acceleration towards finding a cure for coeliac disease.

Together we want to answer questions like these, and others that are important to you:

• What causes people with the coeliac disease gene to develop coeliac disease?
• What causes symptoms to be more severe in some and not others?
• How can we develop better treatments for people with coeliac disease?

For information about our Privacy Policy click here.