Letters To The Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 14, 2017; 23(22): 4132-4134
Published online Jun 14, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i22.4132
Is tremor related to celiac disease?
Lucia Ameghino, Malco Damian Rossi, Daniel Cerquetti, Marcelo Merello
Lucia Ameghino, Malco Damian Rossi, Daniel Cerquetti, Marcelo Merello, Movement Disorders Section, Neuroscience Department, Raul Carrea Institute for Neurological Research, Buenos Aires C1428AQK, Argentina
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author reports no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Marcelo Merello, MD, PhD, Movement Disorders Section, Neuroscience Department, Raul Carrea Institute for Neurological Research, Montañeses 2325, Buenos Aires C1428AQK, Argentina. mmerello@fleni.org.ar
Telephone: +54-11-57773200 Fax: +54-11-57773200
Received: January 10, 2017
Peer-review started: January 11, 2017
First decision: February 9, 2017
Revised: April 3, 2017
Accepted: May 9, 2017
Article in press: May 9, 2017
Published online: June 14, 2017
Abstract

Neurological features in celiac disease (CD) are not rare (5%-36%), but tremor is scarcely described. Subjects with CD and healthy controls completed an online survey using WHIGET tremor rating scale. One thousand five hundred and twelve subjects completed the survey, finally 674 CD patients and 290 healthy subjects were included. A higher prevalence of tremor in CD patients was observed in comparison to controls (28% vs 14%, P < 0.001). Frequency of family history of tremor in CD patients with and without tremor was 25% and 20% (P = 0.2), while in the control group it was 41% and 10% (P < 0.001). Controls with tremor showed a higher frequency of family history of tremor when compared to CD patients with tremor (41.5% vs 24.6%, P = 0.03). The results suggested that tremor in CD might be more frequent and possibly related to the disease itself and not due to associated essential tremor.

Keywords: Tremor, Celiac disease, Gluten, Gluten-free diet, Movement disorders

Core tip: We performed an online inquest, completed by 1512 subjects, 674 had celiac disease and 290 controls. We observed a higher (double) prevalence of tremor in celiac patients in comparison to healthy controls (28% vs 14%, P < 0.001). The frequency of a family history of tremor was higher in controls with tremor, but not in Celiac disease (CD) patients with tremor, suggesting that tremor in CD might be more frequent than controls and possibly related to the disease process itself and not due to essential tremor.