Could DD be allergic to oats?

so, first some history. DD who will be 3 yo in dec has yet undiagnosed multiple food allergies/sensitivities. when she went on strict elimination diet in the spring, ALL her unusual symptoms (cough variant asthma, red cheeks, recurring fevers and ear infections, behaviour problems, eczema,...) disappeared. DD does great on very limited foods. fast forward to now. we have been challenging the gluten grains most recently. we started w all of them though which i now see was a mistake. DD was NOT doing well on gluten. first symptom to come back was her being IMPOSSIBLE to live with and very cranky and moody (not to mention crazy hyper too). her cough started to come back next. i wanted to give it a little and see if it would settle down. i cut back on gluten to only twice per day and not after 1 or 2pm (because she wasnt sleeping good at night). next i noticed that she was worse on days that she had oatmeal or cheerios compared to wheat only days. so i decided that i had to do one grain at a time. she is on wheat only right now. and so far her cough seems better and she is definitely less moody. so she seems to be doing better w out the oats although the wheat does seem to bother her some.

SO, now i am confused because if it is oats that bother her then it cant be gluten can it? because oats have only small amounts of gluten compared to wheat. so am i to assume it is an oat allergy then? i thought oats were LESS allergenic than wheat. or maybe does anyone know if there is something common to both oats and wheat that oats have more of? or is she just getting better because we decreased the amount of overall gluten in her diet by restricting it to only the mornings?

if anyone has any ideas...please share!

I'm wondering if maybe she is allergic to the additives, stabilizers etc then? Yes it's odd to be able to tolerate the wheat and not the oats. Right now I believe they are doing a study on the effects of oats on Celiac disease. Here is a website that maybe you can find some sort of clue in there: http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/celiac/

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I have one of the genes for Celiac Disease and am Gluten Sensitive. I also cannot eat oats. I started getting symptoms from oats long before any hint of problems with gluten. Apparently, one of the Celiac genes can have a separate but equally severe reaction specifically to some protein in oats. It's possible also to be allergic to oats and not other grains, so it may not even be a gluten issue.

Oats themselves don't have the same gluten that wheat/rye/barley do, but because of cross contamination, that's why people with Celiac Disease usually have to avoid oats too (in the U.S.; European countries apparently are better at keeping the cross contamination under control).

I hope this helps - take care,

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-Razzle

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Moderator, Allergies/Asthma

wow...that is a great piece of info. i havent read that anywhere yet. thanks. do you happen to know where i could find out more info about that. do you know of any sites that talk in detail about the celiac gene(s)? so am i understanding you correctly that you are sensitive to gluten (eg wheat, rye, barley) but even more sensitive to oats? what symptoms do you get from oats?

thanks again :)

Red_34:

thanks :) i had thought of that as a possibility. i will check out the website.

Carla,

thanks to you too. it is good to know there are others with oat allergy and not grains in general. what symptoms do you get?

Links to info:
The Molecular Basis for Oat Intolerance in Patients with Celiac Disease
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=523824

The Scoop on Oats (from the Celiac Sprue Association)
http://www.csaceliacs.org/InfoonOats.php

Results Interpretation (scroll down to "Why are gene results so complicated, and which genes predispose to gluten sensitivity/celiac sprue?")
https://www.enterolab.com/StaticPages/Faq_Result_Interpretation.htm

I don't know if my degree of sensitivity is different between gluten and oats. I get immediate symptoms now from both. Oats cause an instantaneous loss of appatite and severe nausea (with retching & gagging), and the nausea and loss of appatite persists as long as I can even smell any oats. My first reaction was simply a strong feeling of discomfort and nausea. This has gotten worse as time has gone by. I think the combination of gluten (wheat/rye/barley) and oats causes a more intense/severe reaction than either alone.

I hope this helps - take care,

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-Razzle