Prospective screening for anti-gliadin IgA in Applied Medical sciences students at Taif University

ABSTRACT

Celiac disease is an autoimmune enteropathy disease caused by an immune reaction to gliadin which is a component of gluten that affects the intestinal lamina and leads to its atrophy, which occurs when a celiac patient consumes gluten products. The symptoms are different from diarrhea, vomiting, or abdominal pain after eating gluten, however, most of them are asymptomatic. Due to the low frequency of studies regarding celiac disease among youngsters in Saudi Arabia, thegoal of this study was to screen anti-gliadin IgA among students at the College of Applied Medical Sciences at Taif University. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 182 healthy participants from students at the College of Applied Medical Sciences at Taif University from March 3, 2022, to March 26, 2022. Some participants have confirmed to have food allergy or an immune disorder such as nut allergy, systemic lupus erythema, and wheat sensitivity. The anti-gliadin IgA test was performed by ELISA to assess anti-gliadin IgA titer on the serum of the students. 9 out of 182 were anti-gliadin IgA positive test. Most of the positive participants were females, and one was male, and all were healthy and confirmed to be undiagnosed previously with celiac disease neither their relatives. Moreover, they are not shown symptoms that are associated with their gluten intake. We found an association with many parameters of AGA positivity of the participants such as gender, BMI or COVID-19 infection and vaccine. This study provides a screening analysis of anti-gliadin IgA among students at College of Applied Medical Sciences at Taif University, and our results are similar to the prevalence of celiac disorder in Saudi Arabia. However, seropositivity for anti-gliadin IgA can be a marker for other enteropathies therefore other confirmatory tests should be performed.