Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Benefit of general screening for concomitant autoimunne diseases in patients with chronic autoimunne thyroiditis (AIT) is serious problem from medical, even from economic point of view. Some authors advice for screening, some advert to mass occurence of AIT and warn about huge expenses. Situation vary from one country (region) to another.

Aim: To assess incidence of celiac disease in patients with chronic autoimunne thyroiditis and find any risk factors.

Methods: 200 consecutive patients with autoimunne thyroiditis was selected for the study. Including criteria was positive sonographic findings of AIT and/or positive antibody/ies (anti-thyreoperoxidase, anti-thyreoglobulin). In all patients was measured level of anti-transglutaminase antibodies and IgA, as well as current level of anti-thyreoperoxidase antibodies. Enterobiopsy was performed in patients with positive anti-transglutaminase and sample was assessed according to Marsh’s clasification.

Results: Valid data was gained from 186 pacients, 134 women and 52 men. 9 patient has positive anti-transglutaminase antibody and 8 patients (4.3%) has significant histologic changes for celiac disease. There was no difference in gender, weight (BMI), presence of other autoimunne disease (primarily diabetes mellitus type 1), dose of levothyroxine, little, but not significant difference in age −(33.0 [25.0–38.5] years in celiac group vs. 24.5 [27.3–41.8] in healthy group; P=0,09) and significant difference in anti-thyreoperoxidase levels (396 [210–967] IU/ml in celiac group vs. 152 [35–443] IU/ml in healthy group; P=0.05). No difference was observed in anti-thyreoglobulin antibodies.

Conclusion: Small number of patients made comprehensive statistical arrangement difficult, but this preliminary results indicate usefullnes of celiac disease screening in asymptomatic patients with AIT, especially with elevated anti-thyreoperoxidase antibodies.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector