When his son Matt complained of abdominal pain five years ago, Steve Davis, a WBAL radio sports show host, took the boy to a gastroenterologist, who diagnosed Matt with celiac disease.
Davis immediately put his son on a gluten-free diet, and Matt's stomachaches quickly disappeared. Now 9, Matt eats more dairy products, fruits and vegetables than most of his peers, but he says his favorite food is steak.
"It's kind of embarrassing because my other friends eat regular food, and I need to eat special food," said Matt, who is entering the fourth grade. "The hardest part is going to the grocery store and seeing all this food that looks delicious, that I can't eat."
Matt still enjoys gluten-free chocolate-chip cookies, bagels and muffins, which his father orders by mail from Canada. That can get expensive, Davis says.
"It's a challenge because you need to be cognizant of what your child is eating," said Davis, 42, host of the evening talk show Sportsline with Steve Davis. "If you make a mistake, the ramification down the line is severe."
Davis works actively to promote awareness of celiac disease and raises funds for research. He hopes for a drug that will help celiac patients digest gluten, similar to the Lactaid pill taken by lactose-intolerant people who want to eat dairy products.
Maryland's Fasano is a co-founder of Alba Therapeutics Corp., which is conducting Phase 2 clinical trials of a celiac disease drug called larazotide acetate. It works through another mechanism in the same signaling pathway as CXCR3. The Baltimore biotech company, which provided lab support for the study, estimates the potential worldwide market for a celiac drug at $1 billion a year.
Fasano's next step is to see if the receptor CXCR3 releases abnormal amounts of zonulin in patients with other autoimmune disorders, such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis. The intestines may be a port of entry through which the instigators of these diseases may gain access to the body, he said.
Dr. Peter Green, spokesman for the American Gastroenterological Association and director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University, called Fasano's latest study extensive and well-designed. But he said it is still unclear how this research fits into scientists' understanding of all the mechanisms of damage in celiac disease, because it involves various pathways."They've shown this mechanism very well, but we're still figuring out the whole picture," Green said. "And working out the mechanisms will provide a greater potential for drug development."
euna.lhee@baltsun.com
