"... For reasons that remain largely unexplained, the of celiac disease has increased more than fourfold in the past sixty years. Researchers initially attributed the growing number of cases to greater public awareness and better diagnoses. But neither can fully account for the leap since 1950. Murray and his colleagues at the discovered the increase almost by accident. Murray wanted to examine the long-term effects of undiagnosed celiac disease. To do that, he analyzed s that had been taken from nine thousand recruits between 1948 and 1954. The researchers looked for antibodies to an called ; they are a reliable marker for celiac disease. Murray assumed that one per cent of the soldiers would test positive, matching the current celiac rate. Instead, the team found the in the blood of just two-tenths of one per cent of the soldiers. Then they compared the results with samples taken recently from demographically similar groups of twenty- and seventy-year-old men. In both groups, the s were present in about one per cent of the samples. “That suggested that whatever has happened with celiac disease has happened since 1950,’’ Murray said. “The increase affected young and old people equally.” These results imply that the cause is environmental."