Use of health care services and pharmaceutical agents in coeliac disease: a prospective nationwide study

BMC Gastroenterology

Research Article

Leila Kekkonen¹  Kalle Kurppa²  Markku Mäki²  Leena Forma³  Heini Huhtala³  Pekka Collin⁴  Katri Kaukinen⁴  Anniina Ukkola⁵ 

[1] Finnish Coeliac Society, Tampere, Finland;Paediatric Research Centre, University of Tampere and Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland;School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland;School of Medicine, FinnMedi3, University of Tampere, Biokatu 10, FIN-33014, Tampere, Finland;Department of Gastroenterology and Alimentary Tract Surgery, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland;School of Medicine, FinnMedi3, University of Tampere, Biokatu 10, FIN-33014, Tampere, Finland;Paediatric Research Centre, University of Tampere and Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland;

关键词: Coeliac disease;    Gluten-free diet;    Burden of illness;    Health care service use;    Sickness absence;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-230X-12-136

 received in 2012-03-22, accepted in 2012-09-21,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundApproximately 1% of the population suffer from coeliac disease. However, the disease is heavily underdiagnosed. Unexplained symptoms may lead to incremented medical consultations and productivity losses. The aim here was to estimate the possible concealed burden of untreated coeliac disease and the effects of a gluten-free diet.MethodsA nationwide cohort of 700 newly detected adult coeliac patients were prospectively evaluated. Health care service use and sickness absence from work during the year before diagnosis were compared with those in the general population; the data obtained from an earlier study. Additionally, the effect of one year on dietary treatment on the aforementioned parameters and on consumption of pharmaceutical agents was assessed.ResultsUntreated coeliac patients used primary health care services more frequently than the general population. On a gluten-free diet, visits to primary care decreased significantly from a mean 3.6 to 2.3. The consumption of medicines for dyspepsia (from 3.7 to 2.4 pills/month) and painkillers (6.8-5.5 pills/month) and the number of antibiotic courses (0.6-0.5 prescriptions/year) was reduced. There were no changes in hospitalizations, outpatient visits to secondary and tertiary care, use of other medical services, or sickness absence, but the consumption of nutritional supplements increased on treatment.ConclusionsCoeliac disease was associated with excessive health care service use and consumption of drugs before diagnosis. Dietary treatment resulted in a diminished burden to the health care system and lower use of on-demand medicines and antibiotic treatment. The results support an augmented diagnostic approach to reduce underdiagnosis of coeliac disease.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT01145287

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ukkola et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.