<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> 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