Smartphone application for celiac patients: assessing its effect on gastrointestinal symptoms in a randomized controlled clinical trial

Background: We aimed to study the effectiveness of information provided via smartphone application on gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with celiac disease (CD). Methods: In the present randomized controlled clinical trial, 60 patients with CD were randomly assigned to receive education through a smartphone application (n=30) or conventional clinical education (n=30). The patients were asked to use it for obtaining the required information for three months. We assessed gastrointestinal symptoms using the gastrointestinal symptom rating scale (GSRS) questionnaire at baseline and three months after interventions. The GSRS total score, celiac disease GSRS (CD-GSRS) score, abdominal pain, reflux, diarrhea, constipation, and indigestion scores were calculated. Results: Out of 60 randomized patients, 58 patients completed the study. The mean age of the participants was 37.49±9.32 years, and the mean disease duration was 4.57±3.36 years. There were no significant differences between the two groups regarding the baseline values. In comparison to baseline, the mean CD-GSRS score (p=0.001) and indigestion subscore score (p<0.001) were significantly decreased in the intervention group. The results of the between-group comparisons showed that although the mean GSRS and CD-GSRS total scores were lower in the intervention group than in the standard care group, the differences were not statistically significant. In terms of GSRS subscores, there was a significant difference between the two groups only in the mean score of indigestion (P=0.002). Conclusion: According to the results, using smartphone application for providing information to patients with celiac disease had only a significant positive effect on indigestion symptoms compared with routine clinic education, and we did not observe any significant differences in GSRS and CD-GSRS scores between the two groups. Trial registration: The protocol of the study was registered in the Iranian registry of clinical trials (IRCT code: IRCT20170117032004N2). trial registry webpage: https://www.irct.ir/user/trial/40187/view. Trial registry date: 2019.6.26