Coeliac disease and inflammatory bowel disease Flashcards
What is coeliac disease?
- Gluten sensitive enteropathy or coeliac sprue
- An auto-immune mediated disease of the small intestine triggered by the ingestion of gluten in genetically predisposed individuals leading to malabsorption with cessation of symptoms on gluten free diet
What is gluten?
•Gluten is a protein compound of wheat, rye and barley which is left behind after washing off the starch
What does gluten consist of?
•Gluten consists of gliadin and glutenins
What are the Genetic Abnormalities of Coeliac Disease ?
- Associated with HLA – DQ2 and HLA - DQ8 in 95% and 5% of the patients respectively
- The genes are located on Chr 6p21
- Other coeliac disease genes are under investigation
- Coeliac disease has a strong hereditary predisposition affecting ~ 10% of first degree relatives
Who gets coeliac disease?
- Most prevalent in Western Europe and USA especially in patients of Irish and Scandinavian descent
- Increasing incidence in Africa and Asia
High prevalence of coeliac disease in patients with Down’s syndrome, Type I diabetes mellitus, auto-immune hepatitis and thyroid gland abnormalities
Why does coeliac disease require a high index of suspision?
•A lot of patients in the community have undiagnosed coeliac disease
What is the most common age of presentation of coeliac?
• Bimodal presentation in childhood and late thirties
•Approximately _____% of patients with coeliac disease are older than 60years
20%
How does gluten cause coeliac disease?
What does this show?
Normal Small Bowel Lining with Finger-like Villi
What does this show?
INFLAMMATION + FLAT LINING
How does coeliac disease cause symptoms?
•Flat mucosa does not absorb nutrients and leads to symptoms of coeliac disease
What are the 3 types of coeliac disease symptoms?
- Asymptomatic coeliac disease - detected by a blood test
- Classical coeliac disease
- Atypical coeliac disease
What are the classical coeliac disease symptoms?
- Diarrhoea 45 – 85% of patients
- Diarrhoea : smelly & bulky stool, rich in fat (steatorrhoea)
- Flatulence 28% of patients
- Borborygmus 35 – 72% of patients
- Weight loss 45% of patients
- In children failure to thrive
- Weakness & fatigue 78 – 80% of patients
- Severe abdominal pain 34 – 64% of patients
- Irritable bowel syndrome like symptoms
What is this?
Classic presentation of coeliac disease: steatorhoea – bulky, pale offensive stool
What are the symptoms of atypical coeliac disease?
- Anaemia 10 – 15% of people
- Osteopenia and osteoporosis
- Muscle weakness, pins and needles, loss of balance, fits 8 – 14% of people
- Itchy skin conditions such as dermatitis herpetiformis 10 – 20% of people
- Lack of periods, delayed periods in teenagers, infertility in women and impotence and infertility in men
Bleeding disorders due to Vitamin K deficiency
What is an atypical presentation of coeliac disease?
- Emaciation
- Pot belly due to gaseous distention
- Muscle wasting
- Osteoporosis
What are the investigations for coeliac disease?
- General investigations: FBC, U & Es, LFTs
- Serology for diagnosis of coeliac disease
- HLA DQ2 & HLA DQ8 in children with positive TTGA and symptoms to avoid biopsies
- Duodenal biopsies
How can serology be used to diagnose coeliac disease?
- Tissue transglutaminase IgA (TTGA); 98% sensitive, 96% specific
- Endomysial IgA – connective tissue covering the smooth muscle fibres; 100% specificity, 90% sensitivity
- Deamidated gliadin peptide IgA & IgG (new)
- For monitoring compliance to gluten free diet
- Sero-negative coeliac disease reported in 6.4-9% of patients
How do routine coeliac disease tests work?
- They assess tissue damage
- When the small bowel is exposed to gluten there is overreaction of the immune system to produce antibodies to the proteins involved in tissue damage i.e. antibodies to :
- Tissue transglutaminase
- Endomysium
Deamidated gliadin peptide
What are the Microscopic features of Coeliac disease?
- On microscopy there is:
- Villous atrophy (VA)
- Crypt hyperplasia
- Increase in lymphocytes in the lamina propria/chronic inflammation
- Increase in intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL)
- Recovery of villous atrophy on gluten-free diet
How many biopsies should be sampled from the duodenum for coeliac disease?
•At least four biopsies should be sampled from the duodenum at upper GIT endoscopy as changes can be patchy
What does this show?
What does this show?
•Increase in intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL)
What are the complications of coeliac disease?
- Enteropathy associated T-cell lymphoma
- High risk of adenocarcinoma of small bowel and other organs – large bowel, oesophagus, pancreas
- May be associated with dermatitis hepetiformis – very itchy skin condition
- Infertility and miscarriage
- Refractory coeliac disease despite strict adherence to gluten free diet
What is the result of a gluten-free diet?
•Gluten free diet may reduce risk of complications
Name the conditions included in inflammatory bowel disease
- Crohn’s Disease (CD)
- Ulcerative Colitis (UC)
- Diverticular disease
- Ischaemic colitis
- Drug-induced colitis – NSAIDs
- Infective colitis
What is idiopathic inflammatory disease?
•CD & UC = collectively known as idiopathic inflammatory disease (IBD)