B4CeD Committee
The Before Celiac Disease Diagnosis (B4CeD) Committee intends to advance the study of the earliest phases of celiac disease, pre-diagnosis, with particular focus on population studies, birth cohorts and incidence cohorts of individuals who have potential celiac disease, considering translational opportunities for diagnosis, prevention and treatments.
Please see the Terms of Reference for this committee. If you would like to be considered, please send your CV and a letter of intent via email to info@ISSCD-global.org by 31 January 2025. Your expression of interest will then be forwarded to the co-Chairs for review.
co-Chair: Joseph Murray
Joseph Murray is a Professor of Medicine and a Consultant with a joint appointment in Immunology and Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
Dr. Murray’s training in gastroenterology, population health, as well as his broad experience in clinical, translational, population and basic research provides him with a wide-ranging perspective of the discipline of gastroenterology and most specifically in celiac disease. Dr. Murray has been engaged in patient care and research in celiac disease for more than 30 years.
co-Chair: Renata Aurrichio
Renata Auricchio is associate professor at University Federico II of Naples, Italy, Director of Inter-Universitary Center “European Laboratory for the Investigation of Food Induced Disease (ELFID)”, at the same University and Head of Regional Celiac Disease Center for children. She has been involved for many years in the study of celiac disease in childhood. In particular, she was committed to clinical studies of prevention of celiac disease and identification of risk factors (environmental, genetics and immunological) involved in the early phases of the disease and collecting a large cohorts of patients in different phases of the disease (potential celiac disease).
Her research group has investigated also in depth the biological properties of gliadin peptides and their possible role in the activation of innate immunity. She has active roles of responsibility in the European Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) as secretary of the special interest group of Celiac Disease and as Deputy in Chief Editor of JPGN reports.
Eivind Ness-Jensen
Eivind Ness-Jensen is associate professor at HUNT Research Centre, NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and consultant and specialist in gastroenterology at Levanger Hospital, Nord-Trøndelag Hospital Trust, Norway. He is the principal investigator of the HUNT Coeliac Study, a population-based cohort study performed in Nord-Trøndelag County, Norway, were all adult participants were screened for coeliac disease by serology and invited to a clinical assessment including upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with duodenal biopsies. His research group is working on the diagnosis of coeliac disease and the consequence of coeliac disease in adults, in addition to genetic and environmental risk factors of the disease based on data and biological materiel collected through the HUNT studies.
Steffen Husby
Steffen Husby is a paediatric gastroenterologist, his present position is Professor of Pediatrics at University of Southern Denmark. He has supervised 14 Ph.D. students and during the last decades performed research on inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, particularly in celiac disease (CeD) including epidemiology, clinical studies and pathophysiological investigations. We have performed registry-based studies on the prevalence of paediatric CeD in Denmark, utilizing national databases and cohorts.
A main interest is risk factors for the development of CeD, and we have in the large Danish and Norwegian cohorts shown that use of antibiotics in the first years of life increased the risk of subsequent CeD. He has headed the development of new evidence-based guidelines from the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) for the diagnosis of CeD (2012, 2020), which introduced the no-biopsy CeD diagnostic approach.