Celiac.com 12/26/2014 - Celiac disease can have such a wide-ranging number of symptoms, ranging over so many parts of the body, that it can be hard for doctors seeking to make a diagnosis to even suspect celiac disease as an underlying cause in the first place.
A team of researchers set out to better understand the characteristics of celiac disease by looking at the findings in a large number of celiacs diagnosed in a single referral center, and to using clear definitions of the clinical, serological and histopathological aspects of celiac disease to get a better picture of how the disease presents itself.
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The research team included Umberto Volta, Giacomo Caio, Vincenzo Stanghellini and Roberto De Giorgio of the Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences at the University of Bologna’s S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, in Bologna, Italy.
For their study, their team looked at data on celiac patients admitted to S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital from January 1998 to December 2012. They found a total of 770 patients ranging from 18 to 78 years, averaging 36 years old. A total of 599 patients were female.
The team broke celiac disease down into three types: The first type, classical, in which patients present with malabsorption syndrome. The second type, non-classical, in which patients experience extraintestinal and/or gastrointestinal symptoms other than diarrhea. The third type, subclinical, with no visible symptoms.
The team evaluated patient serology, duodenal histology, comorbidities, response to gluten-free diet and complications.
A total of 610 patients (79%) showed clear physical symptoms when they were diagnosed, while 160 celiacs showed a subclinical phenotype.
In the symptomatic group 66% of celiacs were non-classical, that is, they experienced extraintestinal and/or gastrointestinal symptoms other than diarrhea.
Only 34% of patients in the symptomatic group showed classical malabsorption syndrome.
The team found that just 27% of the non-classically symptomatic group complained of diarrhea, while other gastrointestinal manifestations included bloating (20%), aphthous stomatitis (18%), alternating bowel habit (15%), constipation (13%) and gastroesophageal reflux disease (12%). Extraintestinal manifestations included osteopenia/osteoporosis (52%), anemia (34%), cryptogenic hypertransaminasemia (29%) and recurrent miscarriages (12%).
Positivity for IgA tissue transglutaminase antibodies was detected in 97%. Th steam found villous atrophy in 87%, while 13% had minor lesions consistent with potential celiac disease.
A large proportion of patients showed autoimmune disorders, such as autoimmune thyroiditis (26.3%), dermatitis herpetiformis (4%) and diabetes mellitus type 1 (3%). Complicated celiac disease was very rare.
This study demonstrates that the clinical profile of celiac disease has changed over time, and now features much more non-classical and subclinical phenotypes.
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