Body composition and dietary intakes in adult celiac disease patients consuming a strict gluten-free diet.

Background: Celiac disease responds to dietary gluten withdrawal, but data on the long-term effects of gluten-free diets are discordant.

Objective: Our aim was to evaluate the nutritional status and body composition of adult celiac disease patients consuming a gluten-free diet who were in clinical, biochemical, and histologic remission.

Design: We studied 71 patients (51 women and 20 men; mean age: 27 y; range: 17-58 y) and 142 healthy control subjects matched by sex and age.

Intestinal calcium absorption as shown by stable strontium test in celiac disease before and after gluten-free diet.

Objectives: To investigate the effect of gluten-free diet on mineral and bone metabolism in women with celiac disease and, using the strontium test, to assess intestinal calcium absorption.

Methods: We studied body mass index, biochemical and bone mineral indices, strontium absorption test, and bone mineral density in 18 women (mean age 36.8 yr, range 18-68 yr) with celiac disease at diagnosis and after 12 months of gluten-free diet.

Prevalence of hypertransaminasemia in adult celiac patients and effect of gluten-free diet.

The prevalence of hypertransaminasemia and the effect of gluten-free diet (GFD) were evaluated in 158 consecutive adult celiac patients, 127 women and 31 men, aged 18 to 68 years (mean, 32). At diagnosis, 67 patients (42%) had raised aspartate and/or alanine transaminase levels (AST and ALT; mean, 47 IU/L, range, 30 to 190; and 61 IU/L, range, 25 to 470, respectively), whereas 91 patients had normal liver function tests (LFT). Patients with and without hypertransaminasemia were comparable for epidemiological data, body mass index (18.

Need for follow up in coeliac disease.

The use of follow up studies was evaluated in 128 patients with coeliac disease during their first visit to a department for adults. The original diagnosis had been made in childhood in all patients. Fifty eight (45%) of the subjects were following a gluten free diet, 23 (18%) were following a gluten free diet but with occasional gluten consumption, and 47 (37%) had adopted an unrestricted, gluten containing diet for a mean of 11.

Duodenal mucosa and extracellular cyclic nucleotide pattern in coeliac disease.

This study measured the values of cyclic nucleotides and adenylate and guanylate cyclase activities in duodenal mucosa homogenates to verify if they played a part in coeliac disease. Nine controls, 13 patients who did not receive treatment and nine patients who received treatment were studied. Cyclase activity assays were performed under basal conditions and in the presence of gliadin derived peptides.