Background

Celiac disease (CD) is caused by a hypersensitive reaction of genetically predisposed individuals to ingested gluten. Gluten is a set of proteins present in many kinds of cereal grain, e.g. wheat, barley and rye. CD affects the upper small intestine and results in more or less complete atrophy of the villi of the mucous membrane which can lead to malabsorption problems, e.g. chronic vitamin deficiency. The symptoms are variable or sometimes even absent.

Elevated levels of gliadin-specific antibodies occur in the sera of celiac patients. Gliadin is a component of gluten and constitutes a predominant antigen. It is fragmented in the small intestine and the resulting peptides are deamidated by the enzyme tissue transglutaminase (tTG) which itself has been identified as the major CD autoantigen.

Recently, it was shown that certain deamidated gliadin peptides are powerful immunogens and that antibodies directed at these peptides exhibit a better diagnostic accuracy for CD, as compared to antibodies directed at crude gliadin.

Technical information

The EULISA Modified Gliadin Peptide IgA is intended for the quantitative or qualitative determination of IgA antibodies in human serum, directed against a modified (deamidated) gliadin peptide (MGP). The immobilised antigen is a highly purified, synthetic peptide derivative. The test is fast (incubation time 30-30-30 minutes) and flexible (break apart wells, ready-to-use reagents). Six calibrators allow quantitative measurements; a negative and a positive control are used to check assay performance.