The research of incidence of celiac disease and autoimmune thyroid disease in cases with diagnosis of endometriosis, unexplained infertility or recurrent abortion

Celiac disease, a malabsorption syndrome, is characteristic with development of intense inflammation of mucosa of small intestine after gluten containing foods. In addition to malabsorption, it is a metabolic disorder. It may cause infertility in women of reproductive age, spontaneous abortion, preterm labor, IUGR and preeclampsia. Autoimmune thyroiditis affects many functions of the reproductive life, too. It can impact negatively on ovulation, fertilization and implantation. It leads to abortion and complications of late pregnancy. It may be useful to investigate thyroid antibodies as well as thyroid function tests in patients with recurrent abortions and idiopathic infertility. This prospective, randomized, cross sectional study was conducted with 126 infertile women attended Firat University Hospital Department of IVF during 11.04.2012 -11.04.2013. Patients were divided into 3 groups as follows: unexplained infertility (n = 42, group 1), endometriosis (n = 42, group 2) and recurrent abortion (RA) (n = 42, group 3).The mean age and BMI of these 126 patients were 31 ± 5 years and 25.5 ± 4.4 kg/m2 respectively. The prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms classified as Rome III criteria were highest in group2, median in group3 and lowest in group1. The comparison of celiac autoantibodies in participants revealed out significant difference between group 1 and group 3 for parameter of AGA IgG levels. For thyroid function tests and thyroid autoantibodies, significant difference was only observed for parameter of free T3 between group 1 and group 2. In conclusion, the prevalence of celiac disease was higher in infertile population compared to normal population (2% vs 1%), with a rate of 4.7% in RA cases. Key words: Celiac disease, infertility, autoimmune thyroid disorder, endometriosis, recurrent abortion