Celiac disease, still an uncommon problem in Tamilians?

• DOI: 10.1007/s12664-009-0073-5
• Publication Date: 2010-01-26T04:46:03Z
• Authors: R. Ganesh; N. Suresh; M. Sathiyasekaran
• Keywords: Celiac Disease; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Adolescent; Child, Preschool; Humans; India; Infant; Child; 3. Good health

Since 2005, no published data on CD are available from South India.We examined the records of children attending the Gastroenterology Clinic of our hospital, which is a tertiary care pediatric hospital, between March 2006 and February 2009 with chronic diarrhea, unexplained growth retarda-tion with or without anemia, and normal serum IgA, and in whom IgA anti-tissue transglutaminase antibody (IgA anti-tTG) was performed. During this period, 98 children (19 from North India) reported with chronic diarrhea and 27 required admission. Seventy-five children (76%) were tested for IgA anti-tTG and chronic diarrhea was the indica-tion in 72 (96%) children. IgA antibodies against tTG was detected using recombinant human tTG constituted with gliadin-specific peptide as the antigen (