Background. Celiac disease (CD) is significantly underdiagnosed, despite significant efforts made in the last decades to increase its diagnostic rate. This has lead to a high need for developing new diagnostic strategies. Our aim was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of two routine hematologic indices for CD. Methods. In a prospective observational study, 34 newly diagnosed CD patients, 34 age-sex matched controls with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and 16 treated CD patients were assessed regarding the differences in mean lymphocyte count (LY), red blood cell distribution width (RDW) and their ratio (RDW/LY).