Celiac Disease and Viral B Hepatitis: Lessons for Clinical Practice. Hepat Mon

Celiac disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the gut occurring in genetically susceptible individuals after the ingestion of gluten. It is characterized by a flattened mucosa, villous atrophy, and crypt hyperplasia in the small intestine, by the classic malabsorption syndrome (diarrhea, steatorrhea, weight loss), or by seemingly less severe symptoms such as iron deficiency anemia, osteopenic bone disease, amenorrhea, and infertility (1). The elimination of gluten from the diet generally leads to a return to normality of the morphological changes (2). Intestinal damage is caused by an interaction between the deamidated glutamine residues of gliadin and HLA-DQ2 (DQA1*05/DQB1*2) or DQ8 (DQA1*03/ DQB1*0302) molecules (3), with consequent T-cell response and production of autoantibodies against typ