The Anonymous Widower

Long Covid And Coeliac Disease

I recently heard an interview with Adrian Chiles on Radio 5 about the so-called long covid

I am 73 and the more I read about Long Covid, the more I think I had something similar around 1958, when I had just started Minchenden Grammar School, where I missed most of the Spring Term. This was at the time of the 1957-8 flu pandemic., which killed between one and four million people worldwide.

This article on New Decoder is a personal memory of that pandemic, from an experienced journalist called Harvey Morris.

Last night, I was listening to another program about kids with long covid and they seemed to be describing how I felt all those years ago.

One of those two programs, also said that one doctor tested patients for coeliac disease.

In 1997, at the age of fifty, I was diagnosed as a coeliac and have been gluten-free ever since. From friends and acquaintances, who are also coeliac on a long-term gluten-free diet, it appears that none of us have had a serious dose of the covids, including one who works in an office with several cases of Covid-19.

This observation has been backed-up by peer-reviewed research at the University of Padua, who followed a group of coeliacs on a long-term gluten-free diet through the first wave of the pandemic. None caught the virus.

It should also be noted that Joe West at the University of Nottingham, has shown that coeliacs on a long-term gluten-free diet are 25 % less likely to get cancer, so do we have a strong immune system, that gives us this protection against against both cancer and the covids.

Coeliac disease has been called the many-headed hydra by some doctors, so could it be an alligator in the swamp of Covid-19?

Research needs to be done!

But could it be that in 1958, my less than perfect immune system, because I was not diagnosed as a coeliac and was not on a gluten-free diet, had difficulty overcoming the flu at the time?

March 11, 2021 - Posted by AnonW | Health | 1957-58 Flu Pandemic, Coeliac, COVID-19, COVID-19 And Coeliac Disease, Long Covid, Research