It can be challenging to diagnose health issues at times, particularly when the symptoms don't appear to indicate a single, obvious reason. For months, a coworker of mine had been experiencing many annoying symptoms, such as persistent exhaustion, trembling hands, and extreme constipation.
She had a colonoscopy because doctors first believed her problems were due to her digestive system. But as her symptoms continued, she had more testing, which included an upper endoscopy and blood tests for celiac disease.
Her case was especially interesting since her symptoms were different from those often associated with celiac disease. Celiac disease frequently causes diarrhea and stomach issues, but it can also result in constipation, exhaustion, and neurological symptoms including tingling, shaking hands, or balance issues, which were her main issues.
To allow her small intestine to recover, she is required to stick to a strict gluten-free diet for the rest of her life. She is also taking medicine to help control her extreme constipation.
Her story serves as a helpful reminder that not everyone's medical circumstances are the same. Finding the correct diagnosis requires patience, testing, and digging past the most obvious answer since symptoms can occasionally be different for everyone. To allow her small intestine to recover, she is required to stick to a strict gluten-free diet for the rest of her life. She is also taking medicine to help control her extreme constipation.
Sources:
Rubio-Tapia A, et al. American College of Gastroenterology guidelines update: Diagnosis and management of celiac disease. American Journal of Gastroenterology. 2023; doi:10.14309/ajg.0000000000002075.
What is celiac disease? Celiac Disease Foundation. https://celiac.org/about-celiac-disease/what-is-celiac-disease/. Accessed Jan. 13, 2025.
ReplyDeleteThe final paragraph speaks volumes. Some of my cousins had unexplained growth issues that were due to celiac. I had no idea there could be more neurological issues rather than digestive issues because I've always mostly stereotyped people with celiac have stomach troubles. Malnourishment can probably has a connection to nerve function which might be a possible cause.
The second paragraph shows that symptoms do not always present the same way. This is why proper screening for these diseases is so important. Patience is not discussed enough in relation to these diseases, and finding treatments is a promising avenue for advancing disease treatment.
ReplyDeleteDifferent conditions can cause a variety of symptoms. It's clear that many of these symptoms can overlap with different conditions. I believe thats why having appropriate multi-specialty care by medical doctors is so important yet it is not easy to obtain in todays health care settings. I found this article about how interdisciplinary teams in medicine can lead to less risk of fragmentation of care in patients with Chronic Kidney disease. Saxena, N., & Rizk, D. V. (2014). The interdisciplinary team: the whole is larger than the parts. Advances in chronic kidney disease, 21(4), 333–337. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.ackd.2014.02.011. Do you think having quicker access to different specialties can reduce the hassle of having to wait for a diagnosis due to not getting proper care in a timely manner or would this indirectly increase wait times?
ReplyDeleteThis was a very informative blog. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteAs I looked more into celiac disease and its diagnostic criteria, I found that IgA deficiency can be an important factor in the diagnosis of celiac disease. In a paper I found about IgA deficiencies in celiac disease, it was stated that IgA deficiency can affect the accuracy of standard celiac antibody testing because it can produce false-negative results.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22476042/
So, could it be that an IgA deficiency may have contributed to why your coworker's celiac disease was difficult to diagnose?
This is so interesting, thank you for sharing! My grandma has Celiac Disease, and has been following a strict gluten-free diet for a long time in effort to control her symptoms. She also has ulcerative colitis, which is a chronic large intestine inflammatory disease. She had a surgical procedure called a proctocolectomey with an end ileostomy, and she has been living with an external stoma for years. While Celiac Disease affects the small intestine and Ulcerative Colitis affects the large intestine, they both involve immune and inflammatory responses, and I was curious to know if having one of these conditions increases the risk of the other. There have been many studies that have looked at the relationship between UC and Celiac, and I found this journal article on PubMed where researchers looked at the genetic origins and environmental factors that overlap between these two diseases: Wan, C., Ji, T., Wang, L., Wu, Q., Chen, Q., Wang, Y., Li, Y., He, F., Liu, W., Zhong, W., & Wang, B. (2024). Exploring the molecular mechanisms and shared gene signatures between celiac disease and ulcerative colitis based on bulk RNA and single-cell sequencing: Experimental verification. International immunopharmacology, 133, 112059. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intimp.2024.112059.
ReplyDeleteI am curious to know what makes a person more at risk of developing a bowel disease, and if having one condition makes them more susceptible to another.