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Background and aims Celiac disease (CD) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are both multi-factorial chronic inflammatory auto-immune diseases. In this retrospective study, we determined the frequency of CD in patients with RA using IgA anti-endomysial antibodies (EmA) and attempted to explain this association. Patients and methods Indirect immunofluorescence on human umbilical cord was used to detect EmA in 215 patients with seropositive RA collected over a four-year-period. Two thousand five hundred healthy blood donors (HBDs) served as the control group. Results Among the 215 patients with RA, 12 (9 females) were found positive for EmA while only 7 were positive for EmA in the control group. The frequency of EmA was significantly higher in RA patients than in HBDs (5.58% vs. 0.28%, p Conclusion Patients with RA can be considered as a high-risk group for CD based on the high frequency of EmA positivity observed in our study.