Effectiveness of a gluten-free diet on the autoantibody frequency of endocrine and neuron disorders in patients with celiac disease

Several possible associations between different types of autoimmune diseases have been reported, therefore this study aimed to investigate the relationship between celiac disease (CD) and some related autoimmune diseases by determining the effect of gluten on severity of these diseases. Two hundred blood samples were collected, 50 samples were withdrawn from healthy donors as a control group, 75 were collected from newly diagnosed (ND) CD patients, while the remaining blood samples (75) were obtained from the same patients after 4 months of gluten free diet (GFD) regime. Sera were separated to measure the level of anti-tissue transglutaminase IgA (tTg-IgA), anti-pituitary IgG, anti- thyroid peroxidase IgG (TPO- IgG), anti-islet IgG and anti-ganglioside IgG (IU/ml) by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The results recorded high significant elevation (p>0.0001) in the concentrations of all autoantibodies of both ND and GFD groups compared with their concentrations in the control group. Furthermore, after 4 months of GFD, concentrations of all autoantibodies revealed highly significant decreases (p>0.0001) as compared with ND. Regarding the correlation of all studied autoantibodies with anti tTG-IgA, only anti-ganglioside IgG levels were weakly correlated in pre-GFD treatment patients, meanwhile anti-ganglioside IgG and anti-pituitary IgG were also recorded weak correlations in post- GFD of CD patients. This study concluded that GFD helps to reduce the severity of endocrine and neuron autoimmune disorders in addition to CD, which have been proved by decreasing in the level of their diagnostic autoantibodies.