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Epidemiology and Population Health

Obesity prevalence in celiac disease in the United States from 2014 to 2018

International Journal of Obesity volume 46, pages 441–443 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Celiac disease (CD) is not commonly associated with obesity; however, many patients are overweight or obese at time of diagnosis. As the number of people in the United States with obesity continues to rise, it is not known if the prevalence of obesity among patients with CD has also increased. This study utilized an electronic health record database incorporating over 360 individual hospitals in the United States (Explorys Incorporated, Cleveland, OH). Adult patients who had an esophagogastroduodenoscopy at least 1 day prior to reporting of CD from the years 2014 to 2018 formed the study population. From 2014 to 2018, 13,410 patients had a diagnosis of CD. The prevalence of obesity was 45,000/100,000 persons in this CD population. Prevalence of class I (BMI 30–34.9), II (BMI 35–39.9), and III (BMI > 40) obesity in patients with CD continued to rise over the 5-year span. Class I obesity had the highest prevalence and Class II the highest prevalence increase when obesity classes were compared. Clinicians should be aware of obesity as a comorbidity of increasing prevalence when providing longitudinal care for patients with CD.

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Fig. 1: Prevalence of concurrent obesity and celiac disease is displayed by obesity class, where numbers are raw case numbers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Department of Medicine, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA

    Alyssa Drosdak

  2. Department of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Columbus, OH, USA

    Alyssa Drosdak

  3. Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Sagarika Satyavada, Mayada Ismail, Raj Shah & Gregory Cooper

  4. Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Raj Shah

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  1. Alyssa Drosdak
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  2. Sagarika Satyavada
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  3. Mayada Ismail
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  4. Raj Shah
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  5. Gregory Cooper
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Contributions

AD—visualization, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. SS—formal analysis, investigation, writing-original draft preparation, writing-review and editing. MI—data curation, formal analysis, investigation, visualization, writing-original draft preparation. RS—conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, visualization, writing-original draft preparation. GC—supervision, writing-original draft preparation.

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Correspondence to Alyssa Drosdak.

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Drosdak, A., Satyavada, S., Ismail, M. et al. Obesity prevalence in celiac disease in the United States from 2014 to 2018. Int J Obes 46, 441–443 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-021-01008-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-021-01008-9

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