Associated or Concomitant Diseases Influence Significantly the Health-Sickness Concept in Celiacs

Abstract

It is well-known that feeling to be a healthy or sick person most probably results from the mind than from the body. We all know healthy people who feel sick and vice versa. We were interested in the health and sickness feeling of celiac people, their autorating of these feelings and its conditioning factors as well as their expectations. In this paper we present the results of an inquiry to evaluate these situations. We performed a descriptive, transversal and prospective study for 2 years to groups of celiacs and their families. They received a closed inquiry to be completed before the beginning of the talk. The inquiry included personal data and the co-existence of associated or concomitant (AoC) diseases. Most of the sample's patients felt to be a healthy person (86.8%). Mothers see their children as healthy and the auto rated criteria is significantly better than the adult celiac person ("t"= −6.024 (p = 0.000)). AoC diseases influenced negatively in the feeling of being healthy and strongly decreased the autorating. Longer time passed on treatment reflects an increase feeling of health and of the autorating. In people with AoC diseases and who feel sick, the increased time of treatment did not show significant differences. People with "gluten sensitivity" felt sicker and auto rated themselves with a lower number than celiacs. Many pediatric gastroenterologists notice that the newly agreed definition of celiac disease, referring it as "autoimmune, chronic, incurable, and multisystemic", results in a very negative character of the condition which might compromise the future labour of this people as well as their admittance to different health insurance systems.