An unusual association of three autoimmune disorders: celiac disease, systemic lupus erythematosus and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis

Abstract

Autoimmune disorders are known to be more frequent in women and often associated each others, but it is rare to see multiple autoimmune diseases in a single patient. Recently, the concept of multiple autoimmune syndrome has been introduced to describe patients with at least three autoimmune diseases. We describe a case of a young man with a clinical history of psychiatric symptoms and celiac disease (CD) who was diagnosed to have other two autoimmune disorders: systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. This case is unusual upon different patterns: the rare combination of the three autoimmune diseases, their appearance in a man and the atypical onset of the diseases with psychiatric symptoms likely to be related either to CD or to SLE.