Sourdough Bread Tolerated By Celiac Sprue Patients

Public release date: 17-Feb-2004
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Contact: Jim Sliwa
jsliwa@asmusa.org
American Society for Microbiology

Tips from the Journals of the American Society for Microbiology

SOURDOUGH BREAD TOLERATED BY CELIAC SPRUE PATIENTS

Sourdough bread containing select bacteria may be tolerated by patients with a rare digestive disease that causes gluten intolerance, say Italian and Irish researchers. Their findings appear in the February 2004 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Celiac Sprue (CS), one of the most common food intolerances in Western culture, is a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. A gluten-free diet has been the only treatment option available to patients up to this point.

In the study, sourdough containing wheat, nontoxic oat, millet, and buckwheat flours was mixed with lactobacilli and fermented for twenty-four hours. CS patients were able to tolerate bread made from the experimental sourdough, offering new hope for increasing tolerance levels of wheat flour products.

"These results showed that a bread biotechnology that uses selected lactobacilli, nontoxic flours, and a long fermentation time is a novel tool for decreasing the level of gluten intolerance in humans," say the researchers.

(R.D. Cagno, M.D. Angelis, S. Auricchio, L. Greco, C. Clarke, M.D. Vincenzi, C. Giovannini, M. D'Archivio, F. Landolfo, G. Parrilli, F. Minervini, E. Arendt, M. Gobbetti. 2003. Sourdough bread made from wheat and nontoxic flours and started with selected lactobacilli is tolerated in celiac sprue patients. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 70. 2: 1088-1096.)

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