HUNDREDS of people in Dorset could be part of a 'mountain of under diagnosis', unknowingly living with a serious auto-immune disease, researchers have discovered.

The team from the University of Nottingham searched UK patient records up to and including 2015 for clinical diagnoses of coeliac disease (in which gluten causes a severe internal reaction) and dermatitis herpetiformis (the skin manifestation of coeliac disease).

It discovered that although diagnosis rose by a quarter in four years, from 2011-2015, the rate of diagnosis was slowing significantly, resulting in around half a million people in the UK, including many in Dorset, are still living with undiagnosed coeliac disease.

Researchers also reported that one in four adults over 18 years diagnosed with coeliac disease had previously been misdiagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, the same percentage that had been reported in research from 2013.

Coeliac disease is a serious autoimmune condition caused by a reaction to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. Coeliacs must maintain a strict gluten free diet for the rest of their life if they are to avoid serious complications such as osteoporosis, infertility and although rare, small bowel cancer. The disease affects one in every 100 people and has risen in the UK from 24 per cent in 2011 to 30 per cent in 2015.

“It’s fantastic that the research shows that around 45,000 people were diagnosed between 2011 and 2015," said Sarah Sleet, chief executive of Coeliac UK. " But with half a million people in the UK still without a diagnosis we’ve got a long way to go."

She said that the fact that testing for the condition is slowing and nothing has changed in people being diagnosed with IBS before being tested for coeliac disease, suggests the NHS was 'failing to address the mountain of under-diagnosis'.

"We know this is even more urgent today as recent research is uncovering some symptoms of coeliac disease, specifically neurological ones, that cannot be reversed without an early diagnosis,” she said.

The NICE guidelines for coeliac disease and IBS recommend that anyone presenting with IBS symptoms should be screened first for coeliac disease. However, said Ms Sleet, it still takes 13 years on average for a person with coeliac disease to be diagnosed.