RESTRICTIVE diets for millions of Australians with Diabetes and Gluten intolerance may soon be a thing of the past after the development of a new pill.

The pill, taken 20 minutes before a meal, improves intestinal function, makes foods easier to digest and allows sufferers to eat food that would normally make them ill.

“It is very exciting,” said Bob Anderson, a gastroenterologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. “It’s the first drug that is being promoted as being useful in coeliac disease.”

About 200,000 Australians have a form of gluten intolerance known as coeliac disease, which occurs when the small intestine cannot digest gluten.

There is no cure and sufferers can’t eat foods that contain gluten, including pasta, bread, breakfast cereals, pastries, salad dressings and most sauces and condiments.

Many of the 2 million Australians who have diabetes also follow restricted diets and most need to take insulin to control their sugar levels.

Researchers at the University of Baltimore in the US said the active ingredient in the pill, AT-1001, is released in the intestine, where it inhibits the action of the protein zonulin.

Zonulin regulates the permeability of the intestines and is overproduced by people who suffer from diabetes and coeliac disease.

Excessive levels of zonulin cause intestinal leakage, allowing undigested food and toxins into the immune system, prompting the body to attack itself.

“If everything goes to plan, we could have a product ready by the end of 2006,” the University of Baltimore’s lead researcher Alessio Fasano said.

Dr Fasano’s previous studies revealed that blocking zonulin can prevent diabetes in rats prone to the disease. The rats were able to remain perfectly healthy while eating a normal diet.

“I believe that it is going to be the case that restoring the intestinal barrier will mean that those prone to developing diabetes or coeliac disease can eat a normal diet,” Dr Fasano told the journal Chemistry & Industry.

The pill has been tested on rats and the researchers hope to begin human trials later this year.

Dr Anderson said Dr Fasano’s work was credible.

“The only real reservation is that it’s only been tested in rats,” Dr Anderson said. “Rats don’t suffer coeliac disease. But it’s a major development and it’s important work.”

Len Harrison, a leading diabetes researcher at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, said he was cautiously optimistic about the research.

“I would be positive about the study and I think it points to the intestine as a site that might be abnormal, and there’s evidence for that in the people who are genetically at risk of diabetes.

“It will interesting to see how it will apply to humans. This is evidence that a primary abnormality in the permeability barrier of the intestine might predispose people to Type 1 diabetes.”

Professor Harrison said there was a good chance researchers will develop a treatment that allows people with coeliac disease and diabetes to give up their restrictive diets.

“From what we know about the mechanisms of these disease and how far we’ve come in the last decade, I would think so.”