Oat cereals. Celiac disease (coeliac disease) is a permanent intolerance to certain gluten proteins in genetically predisposed people, having a prevalence of about 1% in the developed world. Gluten is present in wheat, barley, rye, oat, and all their species and hybrids and contains hundreds of proteins, with high contents of prolamins. Oat prolamins, named avenins, are similar to gliadins found in wheat, hordeins in barley, and secalins in rye, which are collectively named gluten. Avenins toxicity in celiac people depends on the oat cultivar consumed because of prolamin genes, protein amino acid sequences, and the immunoreactivities of toxic prolamins which
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.