A milligram of gluten a day....

[harvest_table]

In recent years it has been suggested that patients with celiac disease can be adequately followed up on the basis of merely clinical and serological response to a gluten-free diet. Thus, a duodenal biopsy some months after commencement of a gluten-free diet would no longer be necessary. We report here the case of a celiac patient in whom the ingestion of a milligram of gluten every day for 2 years prevented histological recovery in spite of satisfactory clinical and serological response. The literature regarding the minimal amount of gluten that could be harmless to celiac patients is reviewed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15497770

Wish the full text was available.

Joanna

[MBombardier]

It is for $20...

[tex]

Joanna,

They may have checked too soon for healing to take place. Here are more recent articles, but note the differences in the results:

http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content ... 1.abstract

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/717949

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/b ... 4/art00008

Note that the first 2 studies, results are very similar, and that roughly 80% of the study subjects showed improvement, but only 35% actually returned to normal histology, in 1.9 or 2 years, (per each respective study). In the second study, at 5 years, 66% of patients had mucosal recovery. Unless I missed it, the last abstract doesn't provide any timeline for the followup biopsies. Maybe they were done at random. Presumably, they were done too soon, since they showed only a 17.5% return to normal histology for adults in the study.

Of course, compliance plays a big part in this, also, as suggested by the article that you cited. Maybe one milligram of gluten per day was indeed sufficient to prevent that patient from healing, but if they had waited a few more years, the results might have been different.

Tex