Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2025 Jan 28. doi: 10.1038/s41575-024-01032-w.Online ahead of print.

Jonas F Ludvigsson ^1 2 3, Jialu Yao ⁴, Benjamin Lebwohl ^5 6, Peter H R Green ⁵, Shuai Yuan ⁷, Daniel A Leffler ^8 9

Author information

¹Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. jonasludvigsson@yahoo.com.

²Celiac Disease Center, Department of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA. jonasludvigsson@yahoo.com.

³Department of Paediatrics, Orebro University Hospital, Orebro, Sweden. jonasludvigsson@yahoo.com.

⁴Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

⁵Celiac Disease Center, Department of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA.

⁶Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

⁷Unit of Cardiovascular and Nutritional Epidemiology, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

⁸Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA, USA.

⁹Celiac Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Abstract

Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease characterized by small intestinal villus atrophy and inflammation upon exposure to gluten. It has a global prevalence of approximately 1%. Although the gluten-free diet can be an effective treatment, this diet is burdensome with practical difficulties and frequent inadvertent gluten exposure. Moreover, there are a variety of potential complications and comorbidities of coeliac disease that might be related to malabsorption and/or chronic immune activation. Overall, individuals with coeliac disease have increased mortality compared with the general population, underscoring the severity of this common disease. Comorbidities and complications that have been associated with coeliac disease include poor growth, reproductive complications, kidney and liver diseases, respiratory disease (such as pneumonia) and infections (including sepsis). Furthermore, coeliac disease has been linked to other autoimmune disease and psychiatric disease, as well as certain cancers. Data suggest that mucosal healing on a gluten-free diet might protect against some, but not all, of these complications. In this Review, we present absolute and relative risks of coeliac-associated disorders. We discuss underlying mechanisms, the role of the gluten-free diet and mucosal healing, as well as implications for follow-up and non-dietary treatment of coeliac disease.