High magnification micrograph of celiac disease. (img: commons.wikimedia)
This is an interesting study showing that celiac patients with anemia had worse looking damage in their small intestine than did those with diarrhea.
Another way of saying this is that your only symptom of celiac disease may be fatigue! Which goes to show that one celiac patient can have very different symptoms from another, and that just because someone has celiac disease does not mean that they have severe diarrhea, or even any diarrhea. And it’s worth noting that just because someone has celiac disease does not mean that they have a worse form of gluten intolerance than someone who does not have celiac disease.
Excerpt from Internal Medicine News:
Among patients with celiac disease, those who present with anemia have more severe clinical, serologic, and histologic features than do those who present with diarrhea, according to a report published online in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
In particular, patients who presented with anemia and were found to have celiac disease had more severe damage of the small bowel mucosa and had higher levels of immune and inflammatory markers, compared with patients who presented with diarrhea and were found to have celiac disease, said Dr. Hussein Abu Daya of the Celiac Disease Center, Columbia University, New York, and his associates.
Patients who presented with anemia also were more likely to show reduced bone mineral density at the time of diagnosis.
—
Image from commons.wikimedia
