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

This is an excerpt taken from the summary mentioned below about
Dermatitis Herpetiformis. Several people on the list have been concerned
about cosmetics, soaps and other things applied to the skin. As you can
see below, gluten only causes a problem when it is ingested.
You can get the complete summary by sending the following command to the
celiac listserv.

GET CELIAC SPECTRUM
// EOJ

Hope this is useful,
Marcus in WV




This is a summary of the presentation made by Dr Joseph Murray to
the Tri-County Celiac Sprue Support Group (TCCSSG) in October 1996 and
summarized by Jim Lyles.  The original article was published in the
_The Sprue-nik Press_ and permission was granted to include it as a
reference document for the members of the Celiac LISTSERVE.

Dermatitis Herpetiformis

Next Dr. Murray discussed dermatitis herpetiformis (DH).  DH is an
extremely itchy skin rash.  There is nothing that is as itchy as DH;
even poison ivy may not come close according to those who have had
both.  It effects the elbows, knees, buttocks, back of the head, and
scalp.  Dr. Murray even had one lady who got it in her outer ear
canal.  It comes on in waves.  Crops of little bumps appear and soon
turn into blisters that are extremely itchy.

DH is often thought of as a skin disease, but that is not strictly
true.  DH is a manifestation of intestinal intolerance to gluten.
Research has been done in which gluten has been injected under the
skin of DH patients, and it does not produce a blister.  So DH is NOT
a skin allergy to gluten.

However, if a DH patient takes gluten by the mouth, then it can come
out as DH on the skin.  In fact, Dr. Marsh in Manchester (England)
has put gluten in the rectum and in a couple of cases he had DH
patients claim that they got an attack of DH afterwards.

What happens when a DH patient ingests gluten?  In the intestine the
body's immune system mounts a response to the gluten.  Part of that
response is the production of antibodies, which are like little
chemical messengers the body produces to attack things and help defend
itself.  In DH patients those antibodies often get dumped under the
lining of the skin, where they just sit like little land mines for
days, months, or years.  Then one day something triggers them
(sunlight, iodine in a cleanser, etc.)  and you get this little
bursting forth as the skin's immune system begins attacking these
deposits thus forming the blisters.  But the deposits occur originally
due to the intestine being exposed to gluten.

So DH is the skin manifestation of intestinal gluten sensitivity which
is indistinguishable from CD.  Most, if not all, DH patients will have
some degree of damage in their small intestines.  They may have no GI
symptoms but they have some degree of damage.

* Please remember some posters may be WHEAT-FREE, but not GLUTEN-FREE *