Medicine For Gluten Sensitivity Is Great News For People Who Are Actually Sensitive To Gluten

In excellent news for everyone out there who actually has a sensitivity to gluten, science may be close to a working treatment that will help people deal with occasional exposure to delicious, delicious gluten. Unfortunately, the new medicine will do nothing to help people who think gluten causes a spike in the number of angry Thetans colonizing your intestines.

According to The New York Times, drugs for celiac disease — the autoimmune disease that causes the body to respond negatively to gluten — have shown some promise in clinical trials, though they’re still several years away from being available to the public. When they are, however, they promise a bit of relief for people who live in fear of eating a gluten-free meal that has accidentally been tainted by gluten, either by accident or negligence.

That will be good news for people who suffer from celiac disease, because while the gluten-free diet fad has meant there are a lot more gluten-free options on the shelves of grocery stores, the adoption of gluten-free diets by people who do not have gluten sensitivity has tended to make people more cavalier about cross-contamination. We probably all know a gluten-free dieter who eats big bowls of pasta or hamburgers on wheat buns on occasion, and that can lead restaurant servers or otherwise well-meaning cooks to assume that a little bit of gluten won’t hurt a person. But for people who have celiac disease, a little bit can hurt a lot.

“I’ve endured the agony of accidental gluten ingestion,” writes The Cut’s Molly Oswaks. “Around 30 minutes after consuming something containing gluten, I vomit athletically.”

For people with gluten sensitivity, a medicine that makes the consequences less severe could be great news. Kids could relax a bit and have some gluten-free pizza and not worry about reacting to cross-contamination from wheat flour in the kitchen. That would be great news, because a gluten-free diet can be tough to follow when all the other kids want to hang out at the local juke joint. (I believe all teens today live in a movie from the 50s.)