Newly Diagnosed Celiac and Acute ITP in 8 year old girl

[DawnSvendsen]

Hello,

My 8 year old daughter was diagnosed with celiac about a month ago - she has had many varied symptoms from the celiac including behavioral issues, stomach pain, fatigue, etc.  Last week, we had to rush her to the emergency room with a case of acute ITP - her platelets were at 9,000.  We do not know what the trigger was.  I am wondering if this is something other people with celiac have dealt with  Has anyone else had this issue along with celiac?  If so, could it had been triggered by accidentally eating gluten?  

[trents]

Dawn, welcome to the forum.

I am not aware of any connection between celiac disease or gluten consumption and platelet function. Is your daughter's platelet count back up into normal range again after this event? Having said that, we are discovering new symptoms and new health issues related to celiac disease and gluten sensitivity all the time it seems. At this point in time, the medical community is still much in the dark about celiac disease.

Your experience with your daughter's ITP must have been very frightening. My wife and I can relate. Our 35 year old daughter has had idiopathic thrombocytopenia since age 14. Her platelet count hovers around 30,000-35,000 and her legs are always covered with bruises caused by almost any contact. At times, her platelets have been lower than 20,000 and she has had petechiae. When she was younger we had a several bone marrow scans done that showed her marrow was turning out a lot of malformed platelets that just get gobbled up. So, I would certainly recommend so follow-up investigation to have your daughter's marrow function checked.

[DawnSvendsen]

Thank you so much for your response.  Tomorrow will be 2 weeks since her acute incident. Her platelets will be checked again on Thursday.  Last Friday, she was up to a count of 40 (they were at 9 when we went to the emergency room last week) so still not in the normal range.  We just finished a round of steroids today so we shall see if her number continues to increase or drops back down.  It seems like we are in the beginning of a long process of trying to understand her issue with ITP and whether its chronic or acute.  

Does your daughter have celiac or any other auto immune issues?

[trents]

Our daughter does not have celiac or other auto immune conditions that we know of. I am the celiac in the family. Our daughter is Asian and adopted so she is not a first degree relative biologically.

[RMJ]

There does appear to be some association between ITP and celiac disease.  I hope that going gluten free can help with your daughter’s ITP.

Increased Frequency of Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura in Coeliac Disease and Vice Versa: A Prospective Observational Study

[Scott Adams]

There is indeed a connection, and you can view some of our articles that mention this here:

https://www.celiac.com/search/?&q=Thrombocytopenic&type=cms_records2&search_and_or=and