Gluten multiple-organ autoimmune disorder primarily affecting the small intestine caused by the ingestion of wheat, barley, rye, oats, and derivatives, that appears in genetically predisposed people of all ages. CD is not only a gastrointestinal disease, because it may involve several organs and cause an extensive variety of non-gastrointestinal symptoms, and most importantly, it may be apparently asymptomatic. Many asymptomatic people actually are not, but have become accustomed to living with a chronic bad health status as if it were normal, and they are able to recognize that they actually had symptoms related to celiac disease after starting the gluten-free diet
Anti-gliadin antibodies in food products. Some of these antibodies can recognize only wheat prolamins or very closely related grass seeds; others can detect antigens over broad taxa. The G12 antibody is the newest example which detects the most immunotoxic fragment, a 33-mer peptide from �-2 gliadin; available from Romer Laboratories and the Spanish company Biomedal. It recognizes the toxic fraction of wheat, barley, rye and also of oat. The R5 sandwich assay is another such assay. This assay can recognize wheat, barley and rye, which makes it ideal for evaluating the presence of contaminants in gluten-free foods that do not contain oat.