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Objective. Diagnosis of coeliac disease is based on the presence of villous atrophy which recovers following a gluten-free diet. The presence of circulating antiendomysial antibodies as well as their disappearance after a gluten-free diet supports the diagnosis. It has also been demonstrated that antiendomysial antibodies are detectable in supernatants of cultured intestinal biopsies from patients with coeliac disease. The objective of this study was to compare the histology and antiendomysial antibodies in culture supernatants of intestinal biopsies to validate the in vitro organ culture system as a future diagnostic tool for coeliac disease. Material and methods. Seventy-five antiendomysial serum-positive patients on a gluten-containing diet were evaluated. Patients underwent endoscopy with 5 biopsy fragments: 3 for histology, 1 cultured with and the other without gliadin-peptide activator. Antiendomysial antibodies were evaluated in all culture supernatants. Results. Sixty-eight patients had evidence of villous atrophy, while 73 out of 75 were positive to the organ culture system. The agreement rate between organ culture and histology results was 94%. Conclusions. As all the centres participating in the study obtained good agreement between organ culture and histology results, the new system could be considered a reliable tool for the diagnosis of coeliac disease. Nevertheless, it is possible to highlight cases with an organ culture-positive and -negative histology. This feature could be of considerable interest because, as the sensitivity of organ culture seems to be greater than the initial histology, the new system might be useful in uncertain cases where the risk of missing the diagnosis of coeliac disease is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objective: precise information on gluten consumption is crucial for specifically studying the impact of gluten introduction and gluten intake in celiac disease development. Our aim was to develop and validate tools (food frequency questionnaires, FFQs) for the assessment of gluten consumption in Spanish children aged 7-36 months.Methods: a total of 342 children, who attended primary healthcare centers for routine health surveys or La Fe Hospital for minor health problems as well as healthy children (recruited in nurseries and primary schools) participated in this survey. We have developed two different FFQs (one for 7-12 months and other for 13-36 months). For validation, results from two FFQs were compared with results of 2-day food records and also with the gold standard 7-day records. The mean gluten intake obtained by the 2DR vs. FFQ and the 7DR vs. FFQ, were compared using the Bland Altman plot method and also Lin's concordance correlation coefficient.Results: we found a good agreement between our FFQs and the 2DR and 7DR according to the results of both the Bland-Altman plots and Lin's concordance correlation coefficient.Conclusions: our two new FFQs are therefore the only validated questionnaires available to determine gluten consumption in Spanish children. They are user-friendly and offer excellent instruments to assess gluten intake in children up to 36 months of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]