Abstract
We studied three groups of patient with coeliac disease: group 1=95 adult patients with gastro-intestinal symptoms diagnosed after reaching adult height, 41 of whom had had symptoms during childhood; group 2=23 adult patients with classic coeliac disease treated before or during puberty; group 3=11 coeliac children with short stature and no gastro-intestinal symptoms diagnosed and treated before or during puberty. We evaluated the adult height in groups 1 and 2 and the growth during the first years of diet in group 3. Our study leads us to the following conclusions. Dieting leads to a modest increase (on average not more than 3 cm) of the final height of coeliac patients. Subjects with gastro-intestinal symptoms who have been treated before adulthood reach a mean height similar to the normal population and have a slightly better adult height than non-treated subjects. This difference seems to exist only in men and this might be related to puberty evolving more rapidly in women receiving treatment. Subjects without symptoms during childhood reach a normal final height even without treatment. In our patients, early treatment seemed to have no great effect on adult height.
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Abbreviations
- BA:
-
bone age
- CA:
-
chronological age
- SDS:
-
standard deviation score
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Cacciari, E., Corazza, G.R., Salardi, S. et al. What will be the adult height of coeliac patients?. Eur J Pediatr 150, 407–409 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02093719
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02093719