Background: In the past decade, a number of population-based studies have examined the prevalence of coeliac disease in individuals with type 1 diabetes but prevalences have differed considerably.
Aim: To examine the prevalence of coeliac disease in individuals with type 1 diabetes.
Methods: A systematic review of English-language articles published in PubMed Medline between 2000 and May 2014. Search terms included 'celiac disease' or 'coeliac disease' and 'diabetes mellitus'. Studies were selected with at least 100 individuals with type 1 diabetes being screened for coeliac disease where the coeliac diagnosis was later confirmed through small intestinal biopsy. Data synthesis used random-effects inverse variance-weighted models, and metaregression was used to examine heterogeneity in subgroups.
Results: A pooled analysis, based on 26,605 patients with type 1 diabetes, found a prevalence of biopsy-confirmed coeliac disease of 6.0% (95% CI = 5.0-6.9%). Heterogeneity was large (I(2) = 93.2%). The prevalence was lower in adults with type 1 diabetes (2.7%), and in mixed populations with both children and adults with type 1 diabetes (4.7%) than in children (6.2%) with type 1 diabetes (P < 0.001). Additional subgroup analyses could not explain the large variation in coeliac disease prevalence between studies.
Conclusion: More than one in twenty patients with type 1 diabetes have biopsy-verified coeliac disease. This prevalence is high enough to motivate screening for coeliac disease among patients with type 1 diabetes.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.