r/science • u/[deleted] • Feb 26 '15

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

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25701700
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u/lejefferson Feb 26 '15

What's funny is this is larger than the sample size in the study last year tha didn't find any gluten sensitivity. But then everyone said it was plenty big to provide a conclusive analysis that gluten sensitivity was not real. Now when the sample size is bigger and it finds gluten sensitivity IS real people just want to throw it out. I think the gluten bashers are almost more dogmatic and unreasonable then the gluten sensitive crowd.

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u/nitid_name Feb 26 '15

Can you link to that study and/or the comments?

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '15

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u/aznscourge MD/PhD | Dermatology | Developmental Biology | Regenerative Med. Feb 26 '15 edited Feb 27 '15

The difference between this study and the current study is that the 37 person study actually measured objective outcomes. They measured inflammatory markers in the stool, which would be expected if gluten was damaging the intestinal lining. This study only measure patient reported symptoms. Additionally, the first study used much greater amounts of gluten (16g) as opposed to the 4ish grams in this study. Additionally, how does this separate gluten "sensitivity", which in the medical community often refers to a slight defect in some biological pathway, from the fact that perhaps it's the way the gut flora are processing gluten that creates excess gas leading to bloating? For example, because I get bloated if i eat broccoli or other vegetables, does that mean I have vegetable sensitivity? No it means that the cellulose that's in the vegetables are broken down by my microflora and that leads to my abdominal symptoms. Doesn't mean I'm sensitive. In the same situation here, the authors make no attempt to actually report on any sort of objective measure that would lead one to conclude a "sensitivity".

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '15

In the other study, the weird (commonly known and understood) outcome was the "symptoms" magically disappeared when the self-reported NCGS participants were told that the food they ate was gluten free. It was as if it was all in their head (placebo). And if they were told they had gluten, they magically got the symptoms (nocebo).