Laboratory Findings of Patients Diagnosed with Celiac Disease

Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine with a genetic predisposition. The gold standard for CD diagnosis is evaluating small bowel biopsy samples. As biopsy sampling is an invasive procedure, researchers focus on finding an alternative non-invasive test that can detect CD at an earlier stage. We aimed to investigate the laboratory finding of patients with CD to introduce new diagnostic biomarkers for this disorder.

In this cross-sectional study laboratory results of 175 patients with celiac were evaluated. Subjects were analyzed through following variables: age, sex, Marsh classification, hemoglobin level, white blood cell count, platelets, eosinophil, neutrophil, lymphocytes, ferritin, liver enzymes, fat profile, iron profile, calcium, and phosphorus. SPSS software, version 22, was used for analysis.

69 (39.4%) patients were men and 106 (60.6%) were women with a mean age of 34.4 years. The extraintestinal symptoms were predominant which anemia (28.6%), microcytic erythrocytes (20%) and hypochromic RBCs (26.9%) were the most laboratory findings. Hypertransaminasemia, low ferritin, hypocalcemia and leukemia was reported in 23.4%, 17.1%, 5.7% and 4.7% of patients respectively. According to the pathological classification: 23 (13.1%) patients were Marsh I, 29 (16.6%) patients Marsh II, and 118 (67.4%) patients Marsh III.

The lack of food, vitamins and minerals can be evaluated through laboratory studies and may open the door to early detection of the disease.