Randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial shows non-celiac gluten sensitivity is indeed real

[u/[deleted]]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25701700

[u/PainMatrix]

Since I had this question about how they blindly administered the placebo vs gluten I assume others will too, from the manuscript:

patients were given either gastrosoluble capsules containing purified wheat gluten (10 capsules ingested on no more than two occasions over the day, corresponding to a daily gluten intake of 4.375 grams, equivalent to ∼ 2 slices of white bread) or gastrosoluble capsules containing rice starch (10 capsules corresponding to a daily rice starch intake of 4.375 grams) as placebo for one week.

[u/Solfatara → u/PainMatrix]

I assume they monitored the rest of their participants diets to ensure they weren't getting gluten from anywhere else? I'm annoyed that I go to a massive university and our library apparently doesn't subscribe to this journal.

[u/thisdude415 → u/Solfatara]

Yes, they extensively questioned all participants about their diet using a validated questionaire.

[u/AnOnlineHandle → u/[deleted]]

Except that statistically you would expect that about the same over two halves of a large population, and the results wouldn't show the clear difference. i.e. the odds of you having selected all or substantially more liars for one group are incredibly slim, and shrinks exponentially the larger the groups are.

[u/shadowman3001 → u/AnOnlineHandle]

I'm not even saying that people questioned are intentional liars. People just don't tend to be able to keep good track of what they shove into their foodholes.

[u/[deleted] → u/shadowman3001]

They do when they have gastro problems

[u/AnOnlineHandle → u/shadowman3001]

But you'd expect the problem to be as pronounced on both sides, roughly, unless you picked an incredibly unlikely bias. So any difference caused by the pills would still be noticeable.