Disclaimer: This is an educational and informative post, nothing in it is meant to take the place of medical treatment, neither does it claim to treat, cure or diagnose any condition.
Cross contamination
Food that is supposed to be safe and labelled gluten-free, at times,is contaminated with gluten. Restaurants also just don’t understand how safe food for a Celiac depends on how it is prepared, cooked and handled as well as it being gluten-free.
So this means that,to some degree, those of us with Celiac will encounter episodes of being symptomatic from accidentally consuming gluten. Sometimes symptoms also don’t appear which is also a worry because that means we could have damage and not even be aware of it.
Testing the exposure
I don’t know about you, but having a way to test that level after an exposure would be helpful.Sometimes we experience symptoms but there is no sure way of knowing if we are just feeling off or if it was accidental gluten exposure.
We can’t go running off for biopsies or Ttg-IgA tests all the time obviously and so the question begs: Is there a way to test if we were exposed to gluten?
Enter real world exposure testing…
Gluten immunogenic peptide (GIP) is a test currently under going study.
What is gluten immunogenic peptide?
When gluten is digested, it is broken down into smaller fragments called peptides and then amino acids. Gluten Immunogenic Peptides (GIP) are fragments of gluten that are resistant to digestion and are therefore eliminated in urine and stool.
The test determines what gluten percentage was excreted via urine excretion 6–9 hours after gluten was ingested and can detect it with maximal ranges of between 1–35 hours.
A study conducted in Italy found that Gluten in urine samples was globally found in 8 out of 30 cases.
The GIP test is called a point- of-care test and the result is promising. For those of us with Celiac, eating out at any social event comes with extreme anxiety before, during and after. This tool can reassure a symptomatic person if it was gluten or not.
It can also be used to see if there is compliance to the gluten-free diet for PCP and dieticians.