Copper deficiency as a cause of neutropenia in a case of coeliac disease.

We report a 17 year-old male patient, who presented with chronic diarrhoea, progressive pallor, short stature, anaemia (haemoglobin of 4.9 g/dL) and neutropenia and was diagnosed as coeliac disease. His neutropenia did not respond to 8 months of gluten-free diet, iron, folic acid and vitamin B12 therapy. So we suspected copper deficiency and his serum copper levels were tested, which was low. His neutrophil counts normalised after 2 months of copper supplementation. Hence we concluded that the cause of neutropenia in our case was copper deficiency.