On the basis of screening studies on healthy volunteers, coeliac disease is now recognised to affect 1% of the population.¹ The current optimal serological testing for coeliac disease may be immunoglobin (Ig)A endomysial, IgA tissue transglutaminase or a combination of the two, with a positive predictive value in excess of 95% provided IgA deficiency is excluded. Patients with positive serology then require an endoscopic duodenal biopsy to confirm the presence of villous atrophy and thus a firm diagnosis of coeliac disease. A link between coeliac disease and tuberculosis was first suggested as far back as 1952, but there has been a paucity of data exploring this relationship other than case reports and case series.² The initial focus was on gastrointestinal tuberculosis being one of the differential diagnoses for villous atrophy of the small bowel. However, in 1988 a report from Birmingham, UK, suggested that patients with coeliac disease seemed to have an increased …