Interesting Little Tidbit......

[frenchiemama]

I have a friend who is a developmental biologist doing her post-doc at Johns Hopkins (her hubby is an immunologist at J.H. as well) and she always has interesting things to say.

This is from an email she sent me (we were discussing my recent glutening). It's nothing earth shattering, but I thought it was kinda neat and wanted to share:

just ran into something interesting.

There are these structures between cells called tight junctions, and

the major protein present in tight junctions is called claudin. Tight

junctions prevent things from leaking into, out of, or between cells.

A lot of diseases are caused by having malfunctioning tight junctions.

Anyway - relevant to you - I just read that the intestinal tight

junctions of celiac patients are leaky, and this is probably the

mechanism that leads to inflammation. Pro-inflammatory molecules can

get into your intestine, whereas they cannot in nonaffected people,

and then those molecules can interact with innocuous things like

gluten, causing the effects you experience. The good news is that

drugs designed to increase the "tightness" of the tight junctions are

in development!

Tight junctions are also present in the inner ear, and I found new

claudin gene that is expressed in the inner ear of vertebrates, which

is why I am reading about these things right now.

[Nantzie]

VERY, VERY cool. Thanks for sharing this. I LOVE sciencey/techy stuff.

Nancy

[Guest BellyTimber]

So do I! Thank you!

Apparently in some people like us, the wrong proteins etc can get through the cell walls into the cells of the gut lining as well as into the spaces between the cells, contributing to trouble both ways - I wish I could remember where I read that!