Duration of exposure to gluten and risk for autoimmune disorders in patients with celiac disease
Section snippets
Patients and control subjects
We enrolled three groups of subjects.
Group A consisted of 909 patients with celiac disease (521 females; mean age, 16.1 ± 3.8 years) who were consecutively recruited over a 6-month period from 10 Italian centers of pediatric gastroenterology. Actual age between 10 and 25 years was the only selection criterion. The patients represented 94% of the 967 patients within this age range who underwent follow-up in the centers participating in the study. Diagnoses were made according to the original or
Prevalence of autoimmune disorders in the study population
Figure 1 shows the overall prevalence of autoimmune disorders in the study groups.The prevalence of autoimmune disorders in subjects with celiac disease is significantly higher than in healthy controls (127/909 [14%] vs. 36/1268 [2.8%]; χ2 = 93.1; P < 0.000001) but not significantly higher
Discussion
This study shows that the prevalence of autoimmune disorders in adolescent and young adult patients with celiac disease is significantly higher than in the general population, confirming previous reports in adults.3, 4, 13, [38], 39
The prevalence of autoimmune disorders in patients with celiac disease is comparable to that observed in patients with Crohn's disease who are known to be at risk of autoimmune disorders.40 The mean actual age of the control group and of the patients with Crohn's
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