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Reply from Don Kasarda, Albany, CA

As Richard Abrams has indicated, the Irish work has not been published as a
full paper yet. A final publication is being worked on.  It is touchy for me
to comment on this because of my position as a government employee and this
work is not cleared for publication yet.  Probably best to wait for full
publication and then all can evaluate the study fully.  However, I will
stick my neck out, after reiterating that I am not a physician and the
reader should beware, by saying that this work looks very good to me.  The
Dublin researchers used all the latest information and methods in the study.
Of course, 10 patients is still a small number.  I will also mention that
they had considerable difficulty buying supplies of oats that were not
contaminated with wheat and used extensive laboratory testing to clear their
supplies.  So how are you going to be sure that your oats are not
contaminated? Wheat can grow in fields of oats quite readily and
contamination can occur at many steps thereafter in the pathway to market. I
think this work is important and that people should be aware of these
findings, but if they wish to pursue a trial, it should be under the
guidance of a knowledgeable physician and they should be well-informed about
pitfalls and risks. Also,I think it is possible for a person to be
sensitive/intolerant to oats without having celiac disease.

With regard to Gln-Gln-Gln-Pro being in oats (a very good point!), I have
recently done an identity search of the sequence data bases, which indicates
that this sequence shows up in many, many proteins, including at least one
zein (corn) and and one rice protein, so I now think it may be part of a
toxic sequence, but is insufficient in itself. I don't think we can rule out
the possibility that oats are non-toxic on the basis of Gln-Gln-Gln-Pro
being present in the sequences of avenins.  Again, I disclaim responsibility
for the above opinions.  They are presented for information purposes and for
discussion purposes only.

>How toxic are oats for celiacs?  There is anecdotal evidence pro and
>con.
>                                -Rich Abrams, Pittsburgh, PA