# Impact of celiac disease in Behçet’s syndrome patients: a study based on the database of Türkiye

## TL;DR

This study found that celiac disease is more common in female Behçet’s syndrome patients and is linked to earlier disease onset and more comorbidities.

## Contribution

The study is the first to analyze the nationwide impact of celiac disease on Behçet’s syndrome using Türkiye’s national health database.

## Key findings

- Celiac disease was found in 0.21% of Behçet’s syndrome patients, with a significantly younger age at diagnosis.
- Patients with both conditions had higher rates of inflammatory bowel disease, depression, and other comorbidities.
- Female patients were more likely to have both Behçet’s syndrome and celiac disease.

## Abstract

Our primary aim was to investigate the effects of concomitant celiac disease (CD) on the clinical characteristics of Behçet’s syndrome (BS) patients.

The study was a retrospective, nationwide, multicenter study. Turkish Ministry of Health National Electronic Database (e-Nabız) is used under Health Ministry’s supervision to extract the subject’s data.

Statistical analyses were made by the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 20 (IBM Corp., Armonk, New York). Continuous variables were presented by mean ± standard derivation (SD) or median (min–max) according to normality and compared by student-t test. A binary logistic regression analysis was performed to further investigating the relation between having a concomitant CD with each BD manifestation and comorbidity, frequencies of which were detected to be significantly different in the student–test.

A total of 84,241 patients diagnosed with BS were analyzed, and CD was identified in 175 (0.21 %) patients. The group with CD had a mean age of 41.30 ± 13.69 which was significantly younger. the prevalence of females was significantly higher (71.4%). The mean age of first admission for BS was also significantly younger in the group with CD (36.64 ± 13.28). BS patients with CD had a significantly higher prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (27.2% vs. 7.3%, p < 0.001). When comorbid conditions were investigated depression (35.4% vs. 23.3%, p < 0.001), migraine (7.4 % vs. 2.6%, p < 0.001), fibromyalgia (10.9% vs. 4.5%, p < 0.001) and osteoporosis (12.6% vs. 6.6%, p = 0.001) were significantly more frequent in BS patients with CD.

Our results suggest coexistence of CD in BS patients is related to female dominance and probably to an earlier disease onset. Several CD-related comorbidities as well as inflammatory bowel disease were more frequent in the CD group which implied an increased overall disease burden.