Originally,celiac disease was noticed by doctors in the Netherlands after 1945. Children who had been starving during the war were now getting enough to eat, but some still appeared to be malnourished despite adequate caloric intake. They failed to gain weight, they were anaemic, and some even had the distended bellies seen in starving children. Eventually doctors discovered that these children did better on a wheat-free diet. For many years it was thought that these severe early manifestations were required to make a diagnosis of celiac disease. More recently it has been recognized that many people with gluten allergy have a less severe spectrum of symptoms and are often not correctly diagnosed until well into adulthood.
