Deutsch 
Celiac disease / gluten intolerance is a chronic gastrointestinal disease with a prevalence of about 1:250 in Europe.
The definition of gluten intolerance has to be revised due to new data regarding its prevalence. The classic diagnosis of fully developed celiac disease by biopsy-proven villous atrophy only represents the top of the iceberg ("Iceberg model", Logan 1992).
Gluten intolerance is, next to its classic symptoms, associated with other autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, dermatitis herpetiformis Duhring, or diabetes mellitus) or with a risk for miscarriage. The main proteins that rheumatoid arthritis patients react to are gluten.
Dieterich et al. (1997) have shown, that tissue transglutaminase (tTG) is the predominant, if not the sole, endomysial autoantigen characteristic for gluten intolerance. Because the prevalence of associated autoimmune diseases in most cases is high, it is advisable to look for autoantibodies against tissue transglutaminase (tTG) as marker for those autoimmune disease.
The issue transglutaminase and also the epidermal transglutaminase have been proven to be concerned to gluten intolerance. The epidermal transglutaminase especially is associated with extraintestinal manifestations like Dermatitis herpetiformis Duhring (Sardy et al. 1999).
As Luft et al. (2003) demonstrated is an anti-tTG ELISA a reliable method to indicate a coexisting diagnosis of CD in patients with Sjogren‘s syndrome.
Their study shows that anti-tTG is more prevalent in Sjogren‘s syndrome than in other systemic rheumatic diseases. An tTG ELISA may be used as a screening test to identify patients with Sjogren‘s syndrome who are at risk and require further evaluation for the presence of CD.
