Endocrine Abstracts

Aim: Celiac disease is closely related with other autoimmune diseases. Our purpose is to examine the existence of endocrine diseases in Celiac patients.

Materials and methods: Celiac patients admitted to gastroenterology clinic were referred to our endocrinology clinic between the dates of September of 2009 and June of 2010. This patient group was evaluated to see as if they had autoimmune thyroiditis, type 1 DM, primary hypoparathyroidism and primary adrenal insufficiency.

Results: Twenty-seven patients were registered in our study and 6 of them (22%) were male where as 21 (77.8%) of them were female. Mean age was 35±11 years (20–61). Mean body mass index was 22.61±4.45 kg/m² (17.9–34.9). We have detected chronic thyroiditis in 6 and type 1 diabetes mellitus in 2 of patients. All patients with endocrinopathy were female. Plasma cortisol levels were normal. We have made low dose ACTH test to all patients and the results were normal. Moreover we have detected vitamin D deficiency in 23 of the patients (85.2%) and there was secondary hyperparathyrodism in 17 of these patients. We haven’t detected primary hypoparathyroidism in any patient. In addition to endocrinopathies we have detected vitamin B12 deficiency in 13 (48.1%) patients and in 3 (11.1%) of them antiparietal antibody was positive.

Discussion: Endocrinological pathologies especially type 1 DM, autoimmune thyroiditis, rarely Addison’s disease, chronic autoimmune hepatitis, primary billiary cirhosis, cystic fibrosis and lastly SLE have been known to accompany celiac disease. We have detected in our study group that the occurrence rate of type 1 DM in celiac patients was 7.4% and chronic thyroiditis was 22%. We assume that periodic screening for endocrinopathies should be done in Celiac patients.