Prevalence of celiac disease in adult type 1 patients with diabetes

Objectives: celiac disease, an autoimmune disease, is related to immune mediated intolerance to gluten. some studies suggest that celiac disease was 20 times more frequent in type 1 patients with diabetes. the objective of our study was to evaluate the prevalence of celiac disease in hospital based type 1 diabetic adults. methods: our study was carried out retrospectively in medeniyet university goztepe training and educational hospital in istanbul between 2012–2013. the cohort comprised 482 type 1 patients with diabetes attending the diabetes outpatient clinic. the data were analyzed by spss 10.5 package program. student’s t tests is used for comparative analyses. a p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. results: the cohort included 482 type 1 patients with diabetes. fifty seven of them were not evaluated for endomysium antibody positivity. fifteen of the remaining 425 patients were positive for anti endomysial antibody (3.5%). the prevalence of biopsy proven celiac disease was 2.3% (10/425). there was no significant difference between endomysial antibody positive and negative groups in regard of age, sex, or duration of the disease. conclusion: this study confirms that the celiac disease is common in type 1 diabetic patients. since a small proportion of celiac patients are symptomatic this disorder should be screened in all adult type 1 patients with diabetes by antiendomysium antibody.