Patients who’ve had celiac disease ruled out may have another form of gluten sensitivity, but there’s little clinical evidence to explain the latter condition, researchers said.

More patients have been reporting a resolution of symptoms with a gluten-free diet even though they have never tested positive for celiac disease, reported Antonio Di Sabatino, MD, and Gino Roberto Corazza, MD, of the University of Pavia in Italy, in the Feb. 21 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

But there is insufficient evidence in the literature on nonceliac gluten sensitivity or what may cause it, they wrote.

Meanwhile, they went on, patient groups, manufacturers, and the media have been touting a gluten-free diet as the answer to patients’ unexplained gastrointestinal symptoms.

Indeed, some marketers have touted a figure of 17 million Americans affected by gluten sensitivity, although there are no official data on its prevalence, according to Di Sabatino and Corazza.

”Sense’ should prevail over ‘sensibility’ to prevent a gluten preoccupation from evolving into the conviction that gluten is toxic for most of the population,’ they said. ‘We must prevent a possible health problem from becoming a social health problem.’

There have been many names for the syndrome, including gluten sensitivity, gluten hypersensitivity, nonceliac gluten intolerance and nonceliac […]