3 ms·

The evolutionary selection pressure found in modern society is not the same as for most of human history. Celiac's was not a issue before agriculture (no wheat)

The evolutionary selection pressure found in modern society is not the same as for most of human history. Celiac's was not a issue before agriculture (no wheat) and the genes responsible have been under negative selection since the rise of agriculture in Europe until about 100 years ago. Agriculture was so recent that non-adaptive genes have not been fully removed from the population, nor have adaptive ones (like digesting lactose in adulthood) fully spread through the population. Humans were part way through a massive selective sweep (adaption to agriculture) when the industrial revolution happened. If this had taken 100,000 years rather than 10,000 years then Celiac's would have become almost non-existant.

sitharus 9y ago
In addition to lacking wheat pre-agriculture there's a reasonable amount of evidence that the modern increase is due to the elimination of gut parasites - previously the increased immune activity in the gut was beneficial (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4403024/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4403024/). There's also some research that suggests modern high-gluten wheat varieties have more of the proteins that trigger coeliac disease (https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44609 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44609)