Journal of Gastrointestinal & Digestive System
Open Access

Abstract

A study of 720 adults, half of them randomly selected as a control, for undetected coeliac disease of males and females, aged between 20 and 60 from students and employees in two Riyadh Colleges of Health Sciences were conducted. It was also compared the same number of 360 cases with a randomly selected group diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome from Al-Iman Hospital at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, within the same age range and similar mixed gender distribution. The control consisting of undetected coeliac disease and the cases with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), both randomly selected, were tested for autoimmune antibodies to tissues transglutaminase (tTGAs) and endomysial autoantibody (EMAs) as serological predictors of coeliac disease and positive patients of coeliac disease were confirmed by histopathology test. The confirmed cases of coeliac disease were tested for iron deficiency anaemia, Vitamin D deficiency, osteoporosis and weight assessment. In the undetected control, the percentage of coeliac disease was found to be 1.9%, slightly higher than the percentage world wide range in adults with undetected coeliac disease. However, in patients diagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) the percentage was found to be almost five times to that of the control at 9.5%. These findings might explain that given a considerable similarity of symptoms of coeliac disease and irritable bowel syndrome, can lead to the over-diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome, or on the other hand misdiagnosis of coeliac disease.

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