Dr. John J. Zone M.D.
University of Utah
Skin Manifestations of Celiac Disease
Starting off by polling the crowd on different skin disorders and whether they are related to Celiac or not. Seems to be quite a few who likely have DH (Dermatitis Herpetiformis), but maybe don’t know it.
Auto-immune diseases “travel in families”, if you’ve got the genes for one, you may get other auto-immune diseases that are in the same “family” of auto-immune disease. You may not have Celiac, but may have a thyroid disease. About 20% of Celiac sufferers will have thyroid disease.
Over a lifetime, women eat pounds of lipstick. What you lick, you swallow. What you breath in, you swallow. Shampoo; there is no evidence that gluten in your shampoo will affect you, through absorbtion. Unless you have a sore or lesion in your scalp. Gliadin is too large to be absorbed through the skin.
Don’t assume that it can’t be transferred however. Anything that hits a mucous membrane is likely to be absorbed. So, transfers from shampoo to hands to mouth, eye shadow that gets in the eye, etc, can be absorbed and could affect you.
HLA and Celiac Disease
90% of CD and DH patients express HLA DQ2
9% express DQ8
1 in 3 people who were self diagnosed Celiacs, were tested and did not have the gene, and could not have had the disease. (From a study of 69 people Dr. Zone tested in his lab)
It’s a lifetime disease, take the test and be sure.
Dermatitis Herpetiformis
DH is a cutaneous manifestation of cd that is best diagnosed by identifying granular IgA in dermal papillae. All DH patients have some degree of CD and DH patients are likely to reflect the entire spectrum of histological and clinic CD in adults.
*Editors note. I had an appointment to keep, so had to leave the conference a bit early, and so missed the latter few minutes of Dr. Zone’s session as well as the last session of the day. Once I get a bit of time, I’ll be doing some quick articles on some of the vendors (new good food!) and on the conference overall.
My wife has Celiac Disease. I started this website as a way to record some of the information that I am learning along the way, and to help others who suffer from Celiac Disease by having a dependable resource for that information. 
