Coeliac disease in Pakistan: A bibliographic review of current research status.

Coeliac disease is a common disorder worldwide but its impact in Pakistan is unknown. We reviewed the literature to investigate what is published on coeliac disease and gluten-free diet in Pakistan. Search engines including Medline, Embase, Google were used to retrieve information. Only articles published in a medical journal were included. A total of 34 articles were retrieved, 28 of which were clinical. Of these, 14 pertained to adults and 14 described paediatric patients. Most consisted of descriptions of small series of patients or individual case reports. Five articles addressed treatment issues including gluten-free diet. Most (65%) were from Pakistani journals. All publications were from Sindh or Punjab. For a common disorder, there is a paucity of high quality scientific literature on coeliac disease from Pakistan. Systematic, prospective research studies are needed to investigate the impact of coeliac disease in Pakistan including prevalence, clinical presentations and challenges of gluten-free diet.