By Jane Kirby of the UK Press Association
Almost a quarter of British people suffering from gluten intolerance visited their doctor for 11 years or more before getting a proper diagnosis, research shows.
Some 23 per cent consulted their doctor about their symptoms for over a decade, while a further 11 per cent asked their doctor for help for over 20 years.
Coeliac disease can lead to diarrhoea, bloating and abdominal pain and is caused by the body's immune system mistaking gluten for a foreign organism.
Gluten is a protein found in a number of grains including wheat, barley and rye, and sufferers should avoid pasta, cakes, breakfast cereals and most type of bread.
If left untreated, coeliac disease - which affects about one in every 100 people in the UK - can cause osteoporosis, growth defects and infertility.
Women are two to three times more likely to develop the illness than men.
Today's poll of more than 1600 people with the condition found almost 60 per cent were also diagnosed with anaemia even without a test.
Other conditions diagnosed by doctors included anxiety and depression, gastroenteritis, gallstones, ulcers, ME or chronic fatigue syndrome and appendicitis.
Some people were told they were a hypochondriac.
Almost a third (32 per cent) thought GP knowledge about the disease was poor or very poor, and almost six in 10 were misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome.
Sarah Sleet, CEO of Coeliac UK, which carried out the poll, said guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) should be driving up diagnosis rates.
"But with around 500,000 people currently undiagnosed in the UK there is still a long way to go and it will be another 30 years at the current rate of progress before we crack the problem," she said.
Sleet said there needed to be a change in GPs' attitudes, possibly by offering financial incentives so they become better at spotting the disease.
The Nice guidelines suggest relatives should also be tested as coeliac disease runs in families, yet 79 per cent of people polled said this had not happened.
© 2010 PA/AAP