[Comparative toxicity of different cereals for subjects intolerant of gluten]

Coeliac disease is caused by prolamines, the storage proteins of some cereals, located in the endosperm. Cereals do not all have the same toxicity. The four wheat prolamine groups (alpha, beta, gamma and omega gliadins), visible in electrophoresis at acid pH, have been isolated and their toxicities compared by observing the morphological changes in intestinal biopsies cultured in vitro when peptic-tryptic digests of the studied proteins were added to the culture medium. The toxicity was found to be mainly located in the alpha and beta-gliadins and in peptides of 5 to 10 000 molecular weight. Peptides, resulting from peptic-tryptic hydrolysis, varied in length as a direct function of their proline content. In fact, peptide bond splitting by pepsin and trypsin is known to be blocked by proline. Thus, proline content determines peptide length and toxicity. Wheat, rye and barley toxicities were compared on the basis of a correlation between toxicity and the alpha- and beta-gliadin-like prolamine contents of these cereals. Electrophoretic estimation of alpha- and beta-gliadin-like prolamine content gave the following prediction of relative toxicity (in decreasing order): wheat, triticale, rye, barley and oats.