Crohn’s disease and celiac disease are both lifelong conditions related to the immune system.
- Digestive issues like abdominal pain, diarrhea, and weight loss
- Periods of flare-ups followed by remission
- Complications like malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, and anemia
One key difference in the conditions is the parts of the body they affect.
“In celiac disease, the primary location that’s affected is the duodenum (though it can affect anywhere in the small bowel), which is the first part of the small intestine,” says Jansson-Knodell. Crohn’s can affect anywhere along the gastrointestinal tract — from the mouth to the rectum.”
In a person with celiac disease, eating gluten triggers an immune response in the small intestine. The immune system reacts, sending inflammatory cells and antibodies to destroy the gluten molecules, which causes symptoms.
“There is ongoing research to identify similarities and differences between Crohn’s disease and celiac disease, particularly in the areas of genetics, immune factors, microbiome interactions, and environmental triggers,” says Ekta Gupta, MBBS, chief of gastroenterology at the UMMC-Midtown Medical Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
Crohn’s disease has a complex genetic-environmental interaction, says Dr. Gupta.
“But only 2 to 5 percent of people with celiac disease genes [actually] develop the disease, suggesting possible underlying environmental triggers as well,” she says.
Even with the overlap in symptoms, it’s not difficult to differentiate between the two diagnoses by checking serologies (lab work) on patients to screen them for celiac disease, says Melissa Teitelman, MD, a gastroenterologist at Duke Health and professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.
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