Wall Street Journal
by Sumathi Reddy

It’s not unusual after eating that the symptoms set in for Lee Graham : severe stomach pain and worse. “It’s always sort of a game of Russian roulette when you go out to eat,” says Ms. Graham, executive director of the National Celiac Association, a Needham, Mass.-based nonprofit that advocates for people with celiac disease. What’s frustrating for Ms. Graham is that this can happen even when she’s eating what is supposed to be a gluten-free meal. A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that eating gluten-free is nearly impossible, underscoring the need for better treatments for patients with celiac disease. … Those with celiac disease typically need to limit exposure to under 100 milligrams, but the threshold can vary depending on a person’s sensitivity, says Joseph Murray, a professor of gastroenterology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

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Additional coverage:

New York Times, How Can Oats, Which Don’t Contain Gluten, Be Labeled ‘Gluten Free’? by Sophie Egan — Q. How can foods like oats, which don’t contain gluten, advertise themselves as “gluten-free”? A. While oats do not inherently contain gluten, they may carry the gluten-free label to allay concerns about cross-contamination with gluten-containing grains… Such a sorting technique can be useful because commercial oats may contain as much as 2 percent “impurities,” meaning stuff other than oats, such as dirt and rocks along with other grains, according to Dr. Joseph A. Murray, a professor of medicine who directs the celiac disease program at the Mayo Clinic.

Context: Joseph Murray, M.D. is a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist and hepatologist. Dr. Murray's medical research interests focus in two distinct areas: celiac disease or gluten sensitivity and enteropathy. This research program, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, focuses on clinical epidemiology of celiac disease, the role of genetics in predicting disease, the development of animal models for the disease and its associated dermatologic condition, and dermatitis herpetiformis. His second research focus revolves around esophageal disorders, particularly esophageal functional disorders, particularly reflux, and the detection of atypical reflux. This focuses on the use of novel methods for studying esophageal function such as heat impedance and, in particular, the methods for correlating reflux symptoms with actual reflux. You can read more about his medical research here.

Contacts:  Traci Klein,  Joe Dangor

Tags: celiac disease, Dr. Joseph Murray, gluten-free diet, Uncategorized, Wall Street Journal