Nearly 30% of symptomatic first-degree relatives of patients with celiac disease have not received guideline-recommended screening tests, a recent study found. Relatives of 2,081 patients with biopsy-diagnosed celiac disease and followed at Columbia University Medical Center were identified using relationship inference from the electronic health record. Researchers manually abstracted data from each record and performed univariate and multivariate analyses to identify factors associated with testing relatives for celiac disease. They found:

• Of 539 relatives identified, 212 (39.3%) were tested for celiac disease, including 50.4% of first-degree relatives and 71.5% of symptomatic first-degree relatives.
• Of the 383 first-degree relatives, only 116 (30.3%) had a documented history of celiac disease.
• Testing was more likely in adults, relatives being seen by a gastroenterologist, relatives with symptoms, first-degree relatives of a patient with celiac disease, and relatives with a documented history of celiac disease.