Type 1 diabetes, thyroid, gastric and adrenal humoral autoantibodies are present altogether in almost one third of adult celiac patients at diagnosis, with a higher frequency than children and adolescent celiac patients

Abstract

Background: No data are available on the frequency of organ-specific humoral autoimmunity at diagnosis of adult celiac disease (CD).

Aim: To evaluate the humoral immunoreactivities specific of type 1 diabetes (T1D), thyroid (THD), atrophic-gastritis (AG) and Addison’s (AD) diseases in 92 adult CD patients at diagnosis and 237 adult healthy subjects (CTRL).

Methods: T1D, THD and AD specific autoantibodies were analyzed by radioimmunoprecipitation assays. AG autoantibodies were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Results: Of 92 CD patients, 31.5% were positive for at least one of the organ-specific autoantibodies investigated (p < .0001 vs CTRL). Thyroid, diabetes, gastric and adrenal-autoantibodies, that increase with age at diagnosis, were detected in 12.0%, 10.9%, 10.9%, 2.2% of CD patients, respectively. Gastric- and diabetes- rather than thyroid- and adrenal-autoimmunity seem to be specifically related to presence of CD.

Conclusions: One third of adult CD patients at diagnosis is target of at least one organ-specific autoantibody. A systematic organ-specific autoantibody screening in these patients might be of value to promptly identify, prevent or treat the relative diseases.

Keywords:

• Celiac disease
• organ-specific autoimmunity
• humoral autoimmunity

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Annalisa Morelli for having helped with the language revision of our work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported by a “Sapienza” University of Rome” grant.