Screening for celiac disease in the general population and in high-risk groups

BACKGROUND: Celiac disease (CD) occurs in approximately 1% of the Western population. It is a lifelong disorder that is associated with impaired quality of life (QOL) and an excessive risk of comorbidity and death. OBJECTIVES: To review the literature on screening for CD in relation to the current World Health Organization (WHO) criteria for mass screening. METHODS: We performed a PubMed search to identify indexed papers on CD screening with a publication date from 1900 until 1 June 2014. When we deemed an abstract relevant, we read the corresponding paper in detail. RESULTS: CD fulfills several WHO criteria for mass screening (high prevalence, available treatment and difficult clinical detection), but it has not yet been established that treatment of asymptomatic CD may reduce the excessive risk of severe complications, leading to higher QOL nor that it is cost-effective. CONCLUSIONS: Current evidence is not sufficient to support mass screening for CD, but active case-finding may be appropriate, as we recognize that most patients with CD will still be missed by this strategy. Although proof of benefit is still lacking, screening for CD may be appropriate in high-risk groups

Adult Celiac Disease and Its Malignant Complications

Adult celiac disease is a chronic intestinal disorder that has been estimated to affect up to 1-2% of the population in some nations. Awareness of the disease has increased, but still it remains markedly underdiagnosed. Celiac disease is a pathologically defined condition with several characteristic clinical scenarios that should lead the clinician to suspect its presence. Critical to diagnosis is a documented responsiveness to a gluten-free diet. After diagnosis and treatment, symptoms and biopsy-proven changes may recur and appear refractory to a gluten-free diet. Recurrent symptoms are most often due to poor diet compliance, a ubiquitous and unrecognized gluten source, an initially incorrect diagnosis, or an associated disease or complication of celiac disease. Some patients with persistent symptoms and biopsy-proven changes may not have celiac disease at all, instead suffering from a sprue-like intestinal disease, so-called unclassified sprue, which is a specific entity that does not appear to respond to a gluten-free diet. Some of these patients eventually prove to have an underlying malignant cause, particularly lymphoma. The risk of developing lymphoma and other malignancies is increased in celiac disease, especially if initially diagnosed in the elderly, or late in the clinical course of the disease. However, recent studies suggest that the risk of gastric and colon cancer is low. This has led to the hypothesis that untreated celiac disease may be protective, possibly due to impaired absorption and more rapid excretion of fat or fat-soluble agents, including hydrocarbons and other putative cocarcinogens, which are implicated in the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer

CORRELATION OF ENDOSCOPIC AND HISTOLOGICAL FEATURES IN ADULTS WITH SUSPECTED CELIAC DISEASE IN A REFERRAL CENTER OF MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL

Context Clinical presentation of celiac disease is extremely variable and the diagnosis relies on serologic tests, mucosal intestinal biopsy and clinic and serologic response to a gluten-free diet. Objectives To correlate the endoscopic and histological aspects of adult patients with suspicion of celiac disease and to evaluate the interobserver histological agreement. Methods Endoscopic aspects of 80 adult patients were evaluated and correlated with the histological features according the Marsh-Oberhuber classification system. The interobserver histological agreement was based on kappa values. Results The symptoms of the patients varied largely, with prominence for chronic diarrhea, present in 48 (60%) patients. The endoscopic aspects related with the duodenal villous atrophy had been observed in 32 (40%) patients. There were confirmed 46 cases of celiac disease, with prevalence of 57.5%. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of the endoscopic markers for celiac disease diagnosis were of 60.9%, 88.2%, 87.5% and 62.5%. There was moderate interobserver histological agreement (kappa = 0.46). Conclusions The endoscopic markers of villous atrophy, although not diagnostic, had assisted in the suspicion and indication of the duodenal biopsies for diagnosis proposal. Histology is sometimes contradictory and new biopsies or opinion of another professional can provide greater diagnostic agreement