RT Journal
A1 Plebani M, Basso D
T1 DIagnostic testing for celiac disease
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 2010
FD August 11
VO 304
IS 6
SP 639
OP 640
DO 10.1001/jama.2010.1109
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.1109
AB 
To the Editor: In their systematic review, Dr van der Windt and colleagues1 evaluated the performance of diagnostic tests for identifying celiac disease among adult patients with abdominal symptoms. In our opinion, the rigorous clinical criteria adopted by the authors to select eligible literature contributions were not used when evaluating the diagnostic efficiency and effectiveness of serum tests adopted in the analyzed studies. This is particularly true for IgA antitissue transglutaminase antibodies (IgA-tTG), which can be prepared using either guinea pig (gptTG) or human (htTG) antigens. Assays that use gptTG provide results with lower sensitivity and specificity than htTG2- 3 and are often considered obsolete first-generation methods.