- BOSTON (AP) -- People who break out in a blistering rash from eating gluten,
the sticky protein found in wheat and some other grains, may safely be
able to eat oats.
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- A new study put volunteers with this
disorder on diets that included oats and found it did not trigger outbreaks.
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- The ailment, dermatitis herpetiformis,
is an autoimmune disease. The body mistakenly reacts to gluten, causing
an outbreak of itchy, small blisters on the elbows, buttocks, knees, lower
back and elsewhere.
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- Victims are typically told to avoid wheat,
rye, barley and oats. However, doctors have come to suspect from other
research that oats may not actually trigger the attacks.
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- To test this, they put seven women and
three men on gluten-free diets that included 50 to 70 grams a day of oats
for 12 weeks. The average serving of porridge contains about 30 grams of
oats.
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- The volunteers suffered no ill effects,
and all but one of them have continued to eat oats since the experiment
ended.
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- Dr. Catherine M. Hardman and others from
St. Mary's Hospital in London wrote about their results in Thursday's issue
of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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