P . E . Mortimer Et Al . : Follow - up Study of Coeliac Disease

a half of such patients give a history of childhood coeliac disease (Badenoch, 1960; Cooke, Fone, Cox, Meynell, and Gaddie, 1963; Stewart, Pollock, Hoffbrand, Mollin, and Booth, 1967), and it has been postulated that a patient presenting for the first time in adult life without a previous history suggesting coeliac disease has had an abnormal mucosa unrecognized throughout life. However, previous studies of patients who have had coeliac disease as children and have remained on a gluten-containing diet have not included a description of the state of the jejunal mucosa. This paper describes the follow-up study of 10 patients in whom a diagnosis of coeliac disease had been made in childhood and who had received little or no treatment with a glutenfree diet until biopsies were carried out at ages varying from