Preface

It is our great pleasure and honor to present this new book *Celiac Disease - From the Bench to the Clinic*, which refers to the application of experiments to clinical practice to achieve a better and quicker diagnosis of the treatment of this interesting and chameleonic disease. It is the transfer of knowledge from the bench to the bed, as happens in many human diseases, or, in other words, to translate new knowledge from basic investigations to their applications in the clinic.

Celiac disease (CD) can be defined as an autoimmune disease, which may affect several organs but particularly the small intestine, related to gluten toxicity that appears in genetically susceptible persons. It is diffusely distributed worldwide and its incidence is placed between 1 and 2% of the human population. In the last few decades, knowledge about this disease has grown substantially in different areas, and this book is a small sample of these advances.

The editors have written an introductory chapter, which reviews CD from a clinic point of view and describes the associated conditions and their relative frequencies.

Related to the diagnosis of CD, there is an interesting chapter related to serological diagnosis using a new type of test called the point-of-care test, which is an easy and speedy application of several serologic tests in ambulatory clinical consultation. This chapter is written by Prof. Shimoni and clearly describes the different models designed for its application. This has several advantages compared to traditional methods and the most important is the possibility of early detection of CD by general practitioners.

Another chapter refers to the genetics of the disease. Classically, there are two genotypes placed in the HLA system class II associated with the presence of CD, and they are recognized as the most common HLA-DQ2 (90% of cases) and HLA-DQ8 (5% of cases). Prof. Nóbrega et al. describe that the genotype DQ2.5/DQ2.2 is predisposed to this disease, mainly in children.

A very important basic contribution to the pathogenesis of the disease are the autophagic mechanisms, and their role in the production of intestinal lesions in affected children has been described and analyzed by Prof. Bozzola.

The extra-intestinal complications of CD are described by Prof. Jabeen, including ferropenic anemia, osteopenic processes, and some cancer types especially in difficult cases of long evolution and with poor response to gluten-free diet.

We want to thank both the authors for their excellent contributions and the IntechOpen editorial team, especially Ms. Dajana Pemac for her continuous collaboration, kind support, and help in easily resolving all our needs during the editorial process.
