Clinicopathological, endoscopic and serological patterns of Celiac disease in children: A retrospective study from a Tertiary Center in Upper Egypt

Document Type : Original research articles

Authors

1 Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt.

2 Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt.

3 Department of Clinical Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt.

Abstract

Background: Celiac disease (CD) is a common enteropathy due to loss of dietary gluten tolerance. The resultant immune interaction leads to intestinal damage, malabsorption, and intestinal and extraintestinal manifestations.
Objectives: This retrospective study tried to illustrate the clinical, serological, endoscopic, and histopathological characteristics and treatment outcomes of pediatric CD patients attending Sohag University Hospital.
Patients and methods: The clinical, endoscopic, pathological and serological data of CD patients who were previously admitted over the previous three years(2022 to  2024) were obtained from the patients' hospital files. Also, the outcomes of maintenance on gluten-free diet (GFD) were also defined.
Results: Sixty-six patients were included with abdominal distension & pain, diarrhea, and anemia were the most common manifestations. Seven patients (10.6%) had type-1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Endoscopy detected atrophy of duodenal mucosa and scalloping of its folds in 92.4% and 83.3% of patients ,respectively. Serologically, 95.5% of samples were positive for IgA tissue transglutaminase antibodies. Pathologically, Marsh type 3b, 3c, and 3a were the diagnoses of 60.6%, 21.2%, and 18.2% of duodenal biopsies, respectively. Most of intestinal and extraintestinal manifestations significantly (P=0.0002 and P=0.0001, respectively)decreased while body weight, and abdominal distension were insignificantly(P=0.321) improved after GFD.
Conclusion: Children in this study had variable intestinal & extra-intestinal manifestations, typical endoscopic features of CD and majority of them had Marsh 3 b classification. Maintenance on GFD resulted in significant improvement of most of manifestations.

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