BMJ  2008;336:9 (5 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.39435.531296.3A

Letters

Screening for coeliac disease

But where does it take us?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

With reference to the study reported by Korponay-Szabó et al,¹ we do not know the natural history of screen detected patients with coeliac disease.² Although the investigation process for population screening and case finding maybe the same, there is an important ethical difference between them, largely to do with who identifies the patient as ill.

We recently performed a primary care based cross sectional study using serological markers (endomysial and gliadin antibodies) to initially recognise coeliac disease.³ We recruited 1200 adult volunteers from January 1999 to June 2001 from five general practices in south Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Any participant with a positive serological result was offered a small bowel biopsy to confirm the diagnosis of coeliac disease. Twelve new cases of coeliac disease were diagnosed from 1200 samples. The prevalence of coeliac disease in this primary care population sample is 1% (95% confidence interval 0.4% to 1.3%).¹ In this screening . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield S10 2JF

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