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
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.