The prevalence of celiac disease in women with infertility—A systematic review with meta‐analysis

PURPOSE: To determine the prevalence of celiac disease in infertile women. METHODS: A systematic search of four databases was conducted up until February 6, 2020. The search terms “c(o)eliac disease”, “gluten”, “vill(o)us atrophy”, “infertility” and “subfertility” yielded 1142 unique hits. Articles in other languages than English, conference abstracts, letters, and publications where relevant information was missing were excluded. In our main analysis, celiac disease had to be verified by duodenal biopsy. The titles and abstracts, and the full‐text articles were independently reviewed by two researchers. A fixed‐effect model was used to calculate the weighted prevalence. RESULTS: Based on 11 studies (1617 women), the pooled prevalence of biopsy‐confirmed celiac disease was 0.7% (95% CI = 0.2%‐1.2%) in women with any infertility. Restricting our study population to women with unexplained infertility, the pooled prevalence of biopsy‐confirmed celiac disease was 0.6% (95% CI = 0.0%‐1.6%). When including studies where celiac disease had been defined per serology (20 studies; 5158 women), the pooled prevalence of celiac disease was 1.1% (95% CI = 0.6%‐1.6%) in women with any infertility. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that celiac disease is not more common in infertile women than in the general population. Celiac screening in infertile women may have low yield.