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Celiac Sprue Among US Military Veterans (Associated Disorders and Clinical Manifestations)

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Abstract

The present study aimed to describe the clinicalmanifestations of celiac sprue related to malnutritionand to analyze the associations between celiac sprue andother diagnoses. A case-control study compared the occurrence of comorbid diagnoses in caseand control subjects with and without celiac sprue,respectively. All patients with a primary or secondarydiagnosis of celiac sprue (ICD-579.0) who weredischarged from hospitals of the Department of VeteransAffairs between 1986 and 1995 were selected as casesubjects. In a multivariate logistic regressionanalysis, the occurrence of celiac disease served asoutcome variable, while age, gender, ethnicity, and thecomorbid occurrences of other diagnoses served aspredictor variables. A total of 458 individual patientswith celiac sprue were identified. The data confirmed the known associations of celiac sprue withdermatitis herpetiformis, lactase deficiency,enlargement of lymph nodes, and lymphoma. Celiac spruewas also found to be statistically significantlyassociated with pancreatic insufficiency, Crohn's disease,functional bowel symptoms, chronic nonalcoholichepatitis, and pulmonary eosinophilia. The nutritionalmanifestations associated with celiac disease included nutritional marasmus, cachexia, weight loss,hypocalcemia, osteoporosis, vitamin B-complexdeficiency, and various types of iron- andvitamin-deficiency anemias. The large variety of complexassociations clearly indicates that celiac sprue is asystemic disease that involves multiple organs andexceeds an isolated nutritional intolerance togluten.

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Delco, F., El-Serag, H.B. & Sonnenberg, A. Celiac Sprue Among US Military Veterans (Associated Disorders and Clinical Manifestations). Dig Dis Sci 44, 966–972 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026660614372

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