Celiac Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Celiac Disease, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, causes, diet.

Vascular disease in a population-based cohort of individuals hospitalised with coeliac disease.

Ludvigsson JF, de Faire U, Ekbom A, Montgomery SM

Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Department of Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. jonasludvigsson@yahoo.com

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the risk of cardiovascular disease in individuals with coeliac disease (CD). DESIGN: Swedish national hospital-based register data were used to identify 13,358 individuals who had been diagnosed with CD (1964-2003) and 64,118 age-matched and sex-matched individuals without CD. Cox regression was used to estimate the risk of vascular disease in subjects with CD. Analyses were restricted to individuals with a follow-up of >1 year and with no vascular disease before study entry. RESULTS: CD was associated with myocardial infarction (HR 1.27; 95% CI 1.09 to 1.48), angina pectoris (1.46; 1.25 to 1.70), heart failure (1.41; 1.22 to 1.62), brain haemorrhage (1.40; 1.05 to 1.88) and ischaemic stroke (1.35; 1.14 to 1.60). These risk estimates were similar when analyses were restricted to adults in whom vascular disease had been listed as the main diagnosis. In post-hoc analyses, where reference individuals were restricted to inpatients, no association was found between CD and later vascular disease, except for a lower risk of heart failure (0.79; 0.68 to 0.92). CONCLUSIONS: The positive association between CD and later vascular disease may be explained by ascertainment bias.

Published 16 August 2007 in Heart, 93(9): 1111-5.
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