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

An oats summary sent to the List the other day was dominated by
responses involving personal reactions.

Last summer at the International Conference in Baltimore a paper was
presented with the results of one of the latest oats studies.

They used 15 or so subjects, lots of oats, and lots and lots of
biopsies. Most of the subjects had no reactions at all, and biopsies
confirmed that the oats were having no effect on their villi.

But most interesting were the two subjects who had reactions -namely
diarhea. Because THE BIOPSIES OF THESE PEOPLE WERE STILL NEGATIVE!

In other words, they had reactions to the oats- but they were NOT celiac
reactions.

The implications of this study in interpreting the oats summary are
profound. Clearly the individuals who react should avoid oats. However,
the study results mean that the fact that some individuals report
reactions to eating oats is absolutely meaningless to celiacs in
general.

It also provides some insight as to how oats might have gotten a bad rap
in the first place. 50 years ago, when the gluten/celiac connection was
discovered in the Netherlands, the research was entirely empirical. They
didn't have biopsies or blood tests. The link was discovered by watching
when Dutch kids with CD (diagnosed by a doctor using his eyes and nose,
not fancy technology) got better or worse depending on what they ate. If
oats cause reactions which are similar to celiac reactions (but really
aren't) it is understandable that researchers would have lumped oats in
as a "glutenous" grain.

Tom