MedWire News: Being working class, having an older sibling, and being born in certain years are all independently linked with an increased risk for developing childhood celiac disease, a UK study of almost a quarter of a million births suggests.

However, the researchers admit that the effects of these risk factors were mostly quite small.

“This indicates that these perinatal risk factors have a limited role in the etiology of celiac disease in children and young adults,” they say.

The team compared 21 perinatal risk factors with celiac disease in the subsequently born children using information on birth registrations, maternity, in-patient, and day-case records for a defined population in southern England.

The study encompassed 90 children born in 1970 to 1989 who were diagnosed with celiac disease, and 248,431 other children.

Univariate analysis revealed that celiac disease in the children was associated with social class, year of birth, maternal smoking, and parity.

It was also associated with maternal celiac disease, with an odds ratio of 20.6, although the researchers note this was based on only two cases of celiac disease in both mother and child making it not possible to include this variable into multivariate modeling.

The multivariate analysis did, however, confirm an increased risk for celiac disease for children from manual classes IV and V compared with I and II, those born in 1975 to 1979 compared with 1970 to 1974, and subsequent compared with first births, with odds ratios of 3.79, 1.92, and 1.80, respectively.

Reporting in the journal of Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Stephen Roberts (Swansea University) and colleagues note: “Smoking during pregnancy was no longer associated with celiac disease after adjusting for social class, whereas social class, year of birth and parity were all associated independently with celiac disease.” 

Free abstract