En Australia estudian una posible vacuna (aun no testeada en humanos) que podría disminuir la sensibilidad al gluten.

El texto:

Forbidden pastries, pasta and bread may soon be back on the menu for those suffering coeliac disease as a vaccine nears human trials.

New Zealand-born gastroenterologist Dr Robert Anderson is heading a research team in Melbourne developing a vaccine for the condition which affects 1 per cent of the population.

Anderson, in Christchurch at the weekend to speak at a Coeliac Society meeting, said the vaccine contained a fragment of the gluten protein which was toxic to those with coeliac disease.

Gluten is found in wheat, rye and barley.

It was hoped that repeated exposure to the toxin through a vaccine would desensitise a sufferer.

“Your body learns to become tolerant. The goal is to allow people to return to a normal life.”

The vaccine was expected to go into human trials early next year.

Anderson has also brought to New Zealand an interactive CD-rom he has developed to help GPs with the diagnosis and treatment of coeliac disease.

With no drug developed to treat coeliac disease, there was no pharmaceutical company driving awareness of it amongst patients or doctors.

Anderson said United States research indicated it took sufferers an average of 10 years to be diagnosed after symptoms developed.

The condition causes damage to the lining of the small intestine, triggering a range of symptoms such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, tiredness and aching joints.

Left undiagnosed, it can lead to gastrointestinal cancers and osteoporosis.

The only known treatment was to follow a gluten-free diet but that was “incredibly difficult”, Anderson said, with even a crumb of gluten able to damage the intestines of sufferers.

Coeliac disease was diagnosed through a blood test and biopsy, not a skin prick test which had “no role in diagnosis of coeliac disease”.

Anderson, an international expert on the condition, established the Australian and New Zealand Coeliac Research Fund in 2003.

Coeliac Support Group spokeswoman Natalie Johnston said the CD for doctors was “a brilliant idea”.

Despite increased awareness, she said, the condition was still being misdiagnosed.

She knew of one sufferer who was treated for severe depression with a medication containing wheat.

“So that was fuelling his depression.”

He was finally diagnosed with coeliac disease after he began bleeding from his bowel.

He had since become “a normal person again”.

Johnston said a vaccine would be particularly welcome to newly diagnosed sufferers.

Fuente : http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4075010a11.html

Dato gracias a : Etel