A study carried out by the Paediatric Research Centre, University of Tampere, Finland, has carried out a study to accurately assess the prevalence of coeliac disease in a large sample of the European population.
Over 29,000 participants from Germany, Finland, Italy and the UK, including both children and adults tested for the disease by tissue transglutaminase (tTG) antibody test. Positive and borderline cases were further tested for serum in order to find out whether the prevalence of coeliac disease varies significantly over these areas. The overall prevalence was 1%. In the 30-64 year old age range the prevalence was 2.4% in Finland, 0.3% in Germany and 0.7% in Italy.
The research led to the conclusion that there is a large unexplained disparity of coeliac disease in adults across different European countries.
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