The association between coeliac disease and cardiovascular disease

Background  Coeliac disease is more prevalent than was previously thought. The association between coeliac disease and cardiovascular outcome is not clear.
Aim  To investigate whether coeliac disease patients have an increased risk of cardiovascular events.
Methods  A community-based cohort study using a record-linkage database. Three hundred and sixty-seven coeliac patients identified by a positive antiendomysial antibody test or a diagnosis with small bowel biopsy, and 5537 subjects who were tested and had a negative coeliac immunology, were included in the study.
Results  The crude rates of cardiovascular events were 9.5 per 1000 person-years (95% CI: 4.4–14.6) in the coeliac cohort and 8.9 per 1000 person-years (95% CI: 7.6–10.3) in the antiendomysial antibody-negative cohort. Compared with the antiendomysial antibody-negative cohort, the adjusted relative risk of cardiovascular events for coeliac cohort was 1.9 (95% CI: 1.00–3.60). When we excluded patients who had previous hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, the adjusted relative risk was 2.5 (95% CI: 1.22–5.01). The use of any cardiovascular drugs prior to and after entry to the study were 36% and 29% for the coeliac cohort ( P  = 0.05), and 34% and 26% for the antiendomysial antibody-negative cohort ( P  < 0.01).
Conclusion  Our findings suggest that coeliac disease seems to be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular outcome.