Detection of celiac disease in Sudanese with type 1 autoimmune diabetes mellitus using anti-tissue transglutinamase antibodies

Abstract

Gluten sensitive enteropathy (celiac disease (CD)) has strong association with diabetes mellitus (DM) type 1. Since, '2-3% of CD patients have selective lgA deficiency, the majority of the available tests may fail to show the auto-antibodies (the IgA endomysial antibody (EMA)). To prevent such a false negativity, a new Enzyme Linked Immune Sorbent Assay (ELISA) test has been introduced to detect both IgG and IgA antibodies reactive with tissue transglutaminase (tTG), an autoantigen in CD patients. This study has been conducted to detect celiac disease in Sudanese with type 1 autoimmune diabetes using anti-tissue ttansglutinarnase antibodies. To verify this, samples were collected from forty randomly selected patients with DM type l who were attending the outpatient clinics in Gabir Abu Eliz diabetic center and Omdurman pediatric emergency Hospital. Anti-tTG as a marker for CD was determined in all selected samples. All the results were analyzed using Statistical Packages of Social Sciences (SPSS). Thirteen of the 40 patients with DM type 1 (32.5%) were identified as having CD using anti-tTG. In conclusion, the present study revealed that patients with DM type l have an increased tendency to develop CD. Since the‘tTG test has similar sensitivity to EMA, tTG and lgG anti-gliadin may be the only tests evidence of CD and correlate best with gut damage. Therefore, the high fiequency of celiac disease in the present study could be explained by using the tTG test as a detecting tool.