Celiac Disease and Obesity

Description:

Exact mechanism of correlation between celiac disease and obesity is not clearly understood but it seen clinically and experiments has shown favour to these observations.

Celiac disease center in the University of Columbia  conducted a study  from 1981 to 2007 duration, examined 369 patients who were diagnosed cases of celiac disease. Many testing procedures were performed. The study showed that malnutrition was a common condition in both , especially in females with high incidence of diarrhea as a symptom of celiac disease. But at the same time, it was also found that  a huge percentage of the celiac patients – mostly male – were obese. When  gluten free diet was followed, it was seen that while those patients with low BMI attained the normal range, 50% of those who were obese also attained normal BMI.

 A paper was published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology by dr.Willium Dickey in 2006. In this paper, he found that of all the celiac patients he tested; only five percent were underweight. This same study found that 39% of these patients were overweight and 13% were obese of all celiac disease patients. Hence, it can be said that obesity is far more common in celiac patients than malnutrition.

This linkage stresses that weight maintenance counselling should be an integral part of celiac dietary education.