Early introduction of gluten reduces incidence of coeliac disease

1st October 2020

The enquiring about tolerance (EAT) study is an open-label randomised trial of a dietary intervention for the prevention of food allergy (including coeliac disease) in which potentially allergenic foods were introduced to an infant’s diet at an early age.

In the present study, a team from the Paediatric Allergy Research group, Kings College, London, focused on the development of coeliac disease at 3 years of age, after the introduction of gluten, a protein present in wheat that triggers the disease, from 4 months of age. A total of 1004 infants from the general population of England and Wales, were enrolled in the study and were all breast-fed until 13 weeks of age, after which they were randomised to consume six allergenic foods; cow’s milk, hen’s egg, peanut, sesame, cod fish and wheat in addition to breast milk (intervention group) or to continue with exclusively with breast milk until 6 months of age (control group), as recommended by UK government guidelines. The weekly recommended dose of wheat for a child was set at 4g of wheat protein and this was provided as wheat-based cereal biscuits (Weetabix) or equivalent. The team calculated that this was equivalent to a gluten dose of 3.2g/week and though this was set as the minimum intake, no maximum limits were set. The families were asked to complete weekly questionnaires through to 1 year and then every 3 months until 3 years of age.

Findings
For the 1004 (488 given the allergenic foods) infants included in the final analysis, 514 were male (51.2%) and the mean gluten intake between ages 4 and 6 months was 0.49g/week for the control group compared to 2.66g/week for the intervention group. At 8 months of age, gluten consumption had increased to 8.21g/week in the intervention group. Interesting by 3 years of age, 7 children in the control group but none of those in the gluten group, at developed coeliac disease.

Given the relatively small sample size, the authors called for more studies to confirm whether early introduction of gluten is an effective strategy to prevent the development of coeliac disease.

Reference
Logan K et al. Early gluten introduction and celiac disease in the EAT study. A prespecified analysis of the EAT randomised clinical trial. JAMA Pediatr doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.2893