Prevalence of Celiac Disease Autoimmunity in Ethiopian Pregnant Women: A Cross Sectional Study from the Oromia region

Celiac disease is a chronic small bowel disease induced by ingestion of gluten in genetically susceptible individuals affecting 1% among Caucasians in the Western world. The prevalence of celiac disease is still unknown in most developing countries, especially in Africa which suffer from lack of resources to perform screening of the general population. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of celiac disease autoimmunity in women undergoing antenatal care in selected Ethiopian health institutes. A total of 1942 pregnant women were included at median 25 (range 15-45) years of age who were attending antenatal care at 14 health centers of Central and South-East Oromia regional state of Ethiopia. Serum samples were analyzed for both IgA and IgG autoantibodies against tissue transglutaminase (tTG) using radioligand binding assays. Celiac disease autoimmunity defined as testing positive for both of IgA-tTG and IgG-tTG. In all, 4 of 1942 (0.2%) were positive for IgG-tTG of whom one participant (0.05%) was positive for both IgA-tTG and IgG-tTG and defined as having celiac disease autoimmunity. Based on these results, it was concluded that celiac disease autoimmunity is expected to be less common among the female adult Ethiopian population compared with the expected prevalence in Caucasians.