Is adult celiac disease really uncommon in Chinese?

作     者：Ling-ling JIANG Bing-ling ZHANG You-shi LIU 

作者机构：Department of Gastroenterology the First Affiliated Hospital School of Medicine Zhejiang University Hangzhou 310003 China) 

出 版 物：《Journal of Zhejiang University-Science B(Biomedicine & Biotechnology)》 (浙江大学学报（英文版）B辑（生物医学与生物技术）)

年 卷 期：2009年第10卷第3期

页      面：168-171页

核心收录：

学科分类：090603[农学-临床兽医学] 09[农学] 0906[农学-兽医学] 

主　　题：Celiac disease (CD) China Gluten Prevalence Capsule endoscopy 

摘      要：Celiac disease(CD) is a type of intestinal malabsorption syndrome,in which the patients are intolerant to the gliadin in dietary gluten,resulting in chronic diarrhea and secondary malnutrition. The disease is common in Europe and the United States,but only sporadic reports are found in East Asia including China. Is CD really rare in China? We examined 62 patients by capsule endoscopy for chronic diarrhea from June 2003 to March 2008. Four patients with chronic diarrhea and weight loss were diagnosed to have CD. Under the capsule endoscopy,we observed that the villi of the proximal small bowel became short,and that the mucous membrane became atrophied in these four patients. Duodenal biopsies were performed during gastroscopy and the pathological changes of mucosa were confirmed to be Marsh 3 stage of CD. A gluten free diet significantly improved the conditions of the four patients. We suspect that in China,especially in the northern area where wheat is the main food,CD might not be uncommon,and its under-diagnosis could be caused by its clinical manifestations that could be easily covered by the symptoms from other clinical situations,particularly when it came to subclinical patients without obvious symptom or to patients with ex-traintestinal symptoms as the initial manifestations.