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How toxic are oats for celiacs?  There is anecdotal evidence pro and
con.  Examples on this list include parents who fed oats to their celiac
children with no detectable consequences, while Mike Jones in a May 11
posting attributed his ongoing symptoms in the past to oats in his diet.
National celiac groups in North America and the UK have conflicting
positions.  A posting by Jane Oswaks on May 17 referred to new Irish
findings suggesting that oats were safe.  Since my casual hunt did not
turn up anything else, I assume that she was referring to an abstract
in an April 1995 supplement to GUT (page A52) of a paper presented at a
meeting of the British Society of Gastroenterologists by a group from
Dublin with the assertive title: OAT CEREAL IS NOT TOXIC IN COELIAC
DISEASE.  They challenged 9 CD patients, who were in remission, for 3
months with 50g of oats per day and followed them with laboratory and
immunological assays and a post-challenge intestinal biopsy.  They report
that they found no changes in any of the parameters that were
attributable to oats, and they more than imply that oats should be in the
celiac diet.
        A paper given at a meeting often is in the nature of a progress
report so that someone who wants to draw conclusions from the work has
to await the appearance of a data-containing, refereed publication before
even thinking about eating oats.  Their work, if valid, tends to confirm
a report by Dissanayake et al from 1974 that Don Kasarda et al referred
to in their chapter in COELIAC DISEASE (M. Marsh, ed.).  The present
authors appear to have used more patients and exposed them to the
challenge for a longer time than was the case in the 1974 work.
        So, should one eat oats?  I would like to after a 25 year
abstinence.  Unfortunately, I still don't dare.  Especially since
multiple copies of a suspect amino acid sequence, Gln-Gln-Gln-Pro, found
in wheat gliadins are also found in oat avenins, including the most
recently reported sequence of an avenin fraction that I could find (Sept.
1994).  Perhaps Don Kasarda or some other person who knows what is going
on in this field would comment.
                                -Rich Abrams, Pittsburgh, PA