Celiac disease in a large cohort of children and adolescents with recurrent headache: A retrospective study.

BACKGROUND: The clinical picture of celiac disease is changing with the emergence of subclinical forms and growing evidence reporting associated neurological disorders. AIMS: To establish the prevalence of celiac disease in children suffering from recurrent headache. METHODS: In our retrospective study we collected charts from 1131 children attending our tertiary care Centre for Paediatric Headache over the period 2001-2012. They were screened for celiac disease and positive patients were referred to our Operative Unit for Coeliac disease and confirmed positive children underwent upper endoscopy with multiple duodenal biopsies. Celiac children started a gluten-free diet. RESULTS: 883 children (481 females; median age, 9.8 years, range 3-19) performed celiac disease screening, and among them, 11 children (7 females; median age, 8.2 years, range: 4.8-13.9) were diagnosed with celiac disease. Seven children (5 females, median age, 11.9 years, range: 10.3-13.9) had been diagnosed as celiac prior to the neurological evaluation. The prevalence of celiac disease in our sample is 2.04% vs. 1.2% of the general population (p=0.034). CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates, on a large series, that celiac disease prevalence is doubled in patients with chronic headache. Screening for celiac disease could be advised as part of the diagnostic work-up in these paediatric patients, particularly among pharmacological non-responders.

Does anxiety or waiting time influence patients' tolerance of upper endoscopy?

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Endoscopy is an essential and very commonly used procedure for the evaluation of a multitude of gastrointestinal symptoms. Although it is increasingly required, patients often wait on arrival at the endoscopy unit until they are called for the procedure. It is not clear whether or not this waiting time may have an impact on patient's tolerance during upper endoscopy. Our study attempts to address this. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We studied consecutive outpatients who underwent endoscopy from September to December, 2013. Gender, age, body mass index (BMI), previous endoscopic experiences, antidepressant therapy, and the time interval between arrival at the endoscopy unit and the onset of examination was recorded. Anxiety before the procedure, pain, and discomfort were rated by a numeric rating scale (0 = no pain/discomfort encountered to 10 = extremely painful/uncomfortable). RESULTS: One hundred and five consecutive outpatients (male = 52; mean age = 45.3 years; age range = 20-86 years) were included in the study. The mean BMI was 25 ± 4.8; mean waiting time from registration to the procedure was  172 min (time range = 30 - 375 mins). Mean patients' pre-examination anxiety level was 3 ± 3.84, mean discomfort score was 4.3 ± 3.09 and mean pain score was 3.4 ± 3.03. The level of pain and discomfort was significantly higher in patients with higher levels of pre-procedure anxiety. No differences were found in terms of anxiety, pain and discomfort among patients divided according to waiting time. CONCLUSIONS: According to our data, waiting time does not have a significant impact on the perception of pain and discomfort related to the endoscopic procedure. On the other hand, high pre-procedural levels of anxiety were associated with a low tolerance. Further multicenter randomized trials are needed to clarify the impact of waiting time.

Dyspepsia and celiac disease: Prevalence, diagnostic tools and therapy.

The prevalence of dyspepsia is up to 40% in population-based study. Functional dyspepsia is an exclusion diagnosis and it is classified as a chronic abdominal pain-related functional disorder, characterized by the presence of persistent or recurrent pain or discomfort centered in the upper abdomen, neither relief by defecation, nor association with the onset of a change in stool frequency or form. Celiac disease (CD) is a common autoimmune enteropathy, with a prevalence around 1% in the general population. Its diagnosis includes a serological screening and an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with multiple biopsies. Gluten-free diet is the only effective treatment. CD diagnosis is often delayed in asymptomatic patients or in individuals with less clinical gastrointestinal symptoms. Several studies performed coeliac disease screening in patients with symptoms suggestive of dyspepsia, showing a biopsy-proved prevalence that ranged from 0.5% to 2%. The typical endoscopic markers of villous atrophy are not sufficiently sensitive, so some endoscopic techniques, such as "water immersion" and confocal endomicroscopy were proposed to improve the diagnostic sensitivity and target biopsies. A recent meta-analysis estimated that the prevalence of CD was higher in patients with dyspepsia, but not in a statistically significant way. However this assumption should be confirmed further larger studies.