Effects of Gliadin Peptides B1-B4 in Celiac Disease.

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Abstract
Small intestinal organ culture was used as an in vitro system to study the enterotoxic effects of gliadin peptides. Measurement of enterocyte height proved to be a realiable and reproducible way of assessing mucosal change during organ culture. Enterocyte height decreases nonspecifically in normal cultured mucosal, whereas the height of enterocytes of celiac mucosa increases in vitro in controls. All the gliadin peptide fractions (B1, B2, B3, B4) that had been prepared by peptide-trypsin hydrolysis, ultrafiltration, and gel chromatography, equally inhibited the morphological increase of enterocyte height normally observed without gliadin in untreated celiac mucosa. Electrophoretic studies and amino acid analysis of B1-B4 revealed similarity between gliadin fractions with quantitative differences in molecular weight distribution of the peptide components. Our studies suggest that organ culture assessed by morphometry is a suitable model for the investigation of toxic peptides of gliadin in celiac disease. In the future, pure gliadin peptides will have to be examined.