Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Gluten: Not your average plant toxin?

Time is in short supply at the moment so no time for more coeliac stuff, however interesting. I was forwarded a link from Keir Watson to a paper from Simon Murch's group at Warwick:

Matrix Expansion and Syncytial Aggregation of Syndecan-1+ Cells Underpin Villous Atrophy in Coeliac Disease

He's filled out the core findings (with lovely histo pictures) and posted about it on his wife's Rosemary Cottage Clinic blog. The paper is rather neat and I have a great deal of time for Prof Murch.

None of it is tempting me to do a gluten relapse.........

Peter

4 comments:

Tucker Goodrich said...

Wow, that's remarkable. I've noted that celiac and other manifestations of wheat poisoning seem to be associated with a bunch of diseases of the extra-cellular matrix throughout the body, this indicates there's a direct mechanism at work.

Jeff C said...

Fascinating hypothesis, the fact that wheat has few insect predators is an interesting factoid that I'd never considered.

However, before getting to excited, one must keep in mind that Dr. Murch was an associate of the evil, despicable, data-manipulating, false-science-pushing, noble pharmaceutical industry slandering, autistic child taker-advantager of, (insert additional over-the-top dehumanizing epithet here), crook, Dr. Andy Wakefield. Dr. Murch was even a coauthor of the the notorious retracted Lancet paper that set back public health efforts two centuries to the days of Jenner (Edward, not Bruce/Caitlyn).

I'm sure we'll soon find out this is just another shake-down effort by a corrupt researcher trying to suck off the teat of the benevolent processed food industry.

Peter said...

Jeff,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17283751
A third doctor, Prof Simon Murch, then a junior consultant in the department, was cleared.

We'll see...

Peter

karl said...

Hmm - I'm totally un-convinced either way about gluten.

What I think I know:

- We are still, as a species, adopting carbohydrate tolerance as a result of the invention and adoption of farming to replace hunter-gathering - this tolerance is quite variable as is lactose tolerance.

- The wheat I ate as a child (1950's-1960 ) is quite different to the wheat grown today.

- Some of the anti gluten claims seem at least to be exaggerated.

- Selection for frost resistance would increase the amount of PUFA