Celiac.com 03/09/2015 - When you hear estimates saying that celiac disease has a prevalence of about 1% of then general population of a given place, it is important to remember that there are still significant variations in rates of certain subgroups within those general populations.
That is illustrated by a a recent UK study that shows that poor UK children with celiac disease are far more likely to remain undiagnosed, compared their non-poor counterparts. In fact, rich and middle-class children are 80% more likely to receive proper medical diagnosis for celiac disease, compared to poor children, according to results from a recent UK study.
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So even though serological studies indicate that celiac disease affects about 1% of all UK children, current estimates of diagnostic patterns among children do not indicate how disease rates might vary by socioeconomic group.
A research team in the UK recently looked into socioeconomic variation in the incidence of childhood celiac disease. The research team included Fabiana Zingone, Joe West, Colin J. Crooks, Kate M. Fleming, Timothy R. Card, Carolina Ciacci, Laila J. Tata. They are variously affiliated with the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, City Hospital Campus of University of Nottingham in Nottingham, UK, and the Department of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Salerno in Salerno, Italy.
For their study, the team identified all children aged 0–18 years between 1993 and 2012 treated by general practices nationwide that are part of a large population-based patient health database.
They assessed the incidence of celiac disease in each quintile of the Townsend index of deprivation and stratified by age, sex, country and calendar year.
From information on 2,063,421 children, they found 1,247 celiac disease diagnoses, for an overall celiac rate of 11.9 per 100 000 person-years, which was similar across the UK countries, and higher in girls than in boys.
Interestingly, they found a range of celiac diagnosis across socioeconomic groups, with the rate of diagnosis being 80% higher in children from the least-deprived areas than in those from the most-deprived areas (incident rate ratio 1.80, 95% CI 1.45 to 2.22). This pattern held for both boys and girls and across all ages.
Across all four countries of the UK, they found similar associations between celiac disease and socioeconomic status. While celiac incidence up to age 2 remained stable over the study period, diagnoses at older ages have almost tripled over the past 20 years.
Children living in less socioeconomically deprived areas in the UK are more likely to be diagnosed with celiac disease. Increased implementation of diagnostic guidelines could result in better case identification in more-deprived areas.
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