Low Risk of Gastrointestinal Cancer Among Patients With Celiac Disease, Inflammation, or Latent Celiac Disease

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Celiac disease has been associated with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers in small studies; risks have not been estimated from large populations or based on histopathology analyses. METHODS: We examined the risk of GI cancers by using data from cohorts of patients with celiac disease (villous atrophy, Marsh score of 3; n = 28,882) or inflammation (Marsh score of 1-2; n = 12,860); biopsy samples were evaluated at 28 pathology centers. A third cohort included 3705 individuals with latent celiac disease (normal mucosa, but positive serology results). Data were compared with those from an age-and sex-matched population. RESULTS: Of patients with celiac disease, 372 developed incident GI cancers; 347 patients with inflammation and 38 with latent celiac disease developed GI cancers. In the first year after diagnosis and initial biopsy, celiac disease was associated with 5.95-fold increase in risk of incident GI cancer (95% confidence interval [ CI], 4.64-7.64); the hazard ratio [HR] for inflammation was 9.13 (95% CI, 7.19-11.6) and for latent celiac disease was 8.10 (95% CI, 4.69-14.0). After the first year, patients were at no significant increase in risk for GI cancers; the HR for celiac disease was 1.07 (95% CI, 0.93-1.23), for inflammation it was 1.16 (95% CI, 0.98-1.37), and for latent celiac disease it was 0.96 (95% CI, 0.56-1.66). The absolute risk for any GI cancer in patients with celiac disease was 101/100,000 person-years, with an excess risk of 2/100,000 person-years. CONCLUSIONS: Although celiac disease, inflammation, and latent disease all increase risk for GI cancers in the first year after diagnosis, there is no increase in risk thereafter.