An analysis of ancient strains of wheat could eventually yield a bread recipe that people with celiac disease can relish.

Celiac disease is a digestive disorder that damages the small intestine and interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food. It arises from an immune system response against the protein gluten, which is found in wheat, rye and barley.

The cornerstone of managing the condition is a gluten-free diet. That means avoiding breads, cereals and other products containing whole wheat or wheat flours, including grains such as bulgur, barley, spelt, kamut and semolina.

An alternative, according to the authors of the new study, would be to find “bread-quality” wheats that do not contain gluten proteins that are harmful to people with celiac disease.

That notion has gotten a lift from recent research detailing exactly which parts of the wheat gluten protein are targeted by celiac patients’ T-cells, the immune system sentries that normally do battle with foreign invaders such as viruses.

Dr. Oyvind Molberg of the University of Oslo in Norway told Reuters Health that the aberrant immune response seen in celiac disease is driven by T-cell recognition of small pieces of protein - called peptides - derived from gluten.

Using intestinal T-cells taken from people with celiac disease, Molberg and his colleagues had previously found that particular bits of the gluten protein -known as 33mer fragments - are targeted by T-cells, and seem to be the main source of the inflammatory response in celiac disease.

The goal of the new study, published in the journal Gastroenterology, was to find out whether those same T-cells would go after the gluten found in ancient strains of wheat. The researchers tested the cells’ ability to recognize the gluten from a number of wheat strains, which carried different variants of the genes that code for gluten.

Most of tested wheat strains, according to Molberg, are currently cultivated in the historic “Fertile Crescent” area of the Middle East.

The researchers found that wheats of certain genetic makeups - including a grain known as einkorn, and certain pasta wheats - did not appear to contain the troublesome 33mer fragment or protein bits similar to it.

“This indicates that there is a chance of identifying or producing by natural breeding a primitive wheat that can be tolerated by celiac disease patients,” Molberg said.

He stressed that this study does not identify such a wheat, but instead “provides a framework” for further research.

According to Molberg, some of the ancient wheat strains his team analyzed can be turned into “high-quality” bread. The main obstacle, he said, is that the structure of the plants keeps them from being harvested as easily as widely used bread and pasta wheats. That problem, Molberg noted, could be overcome through breeding.

SOURCE: Gastroenterology, February 2005.