AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Celiac disease (CD) is a chronic small intestinal inflammation driven by an immune response to gluten peptides in genetically susceptible individuals. CD was considered as a childhood disease for a long time, but the diagnosis is increasingly made in adults. It is uncertain whether CD in adult patients has been present since childhood or it was acquired later in life and whether gluten-reactive T cells in adults recognize a different set of peptides than T cells in young children. Here we compared gluten-responses in young children and adults by generating gluten-reactive T-cell lines and T-cell clones from eleven HLA-DQ2 positive children (2-4 years old) and six adults with newly diagnosed CD.