Celiac disease screening in patients with scleroderma

both celiac disease and scleroderma have autoimmune etiology and affect the bowel causing diarrhea. as an association of autoimmune disease in a single individual is not rare, it is important to know if a patient with scleroderma may also have celiac disease. to analyze this we studied 105 scleroderma patients and 97 volunteers for iga-ema by indirect immunofluorescence assay. we could not find a higher prevalence of this autoantibody in scleroderma patients. the authors conclude that there is no need to screen scleroderma patients with diarrhea for celiac disease unless there is a clear clinical indication for this.