Hey readers! Turns out a basket of restaurant fries is a lot safer than most of us assume, and a new study finally puts real numbers to it. This issue is a practical one: a fresh shared-fryer dataset you can take to your dietitian, a blood-protein test that could ease diagnosis uncertainty, a pediatric gut marker worth watching, and a new podcast and app to make gluten-free life easier. Let's dig in.
🍟 Dining out with real data
How Risky Are Shared Fryers? New Study Offers Real-World Data for People with Celiac Disease answers a question that comes up at nearly every restaurant table. Researchers tested 98 samples of naturally gluten-free foods (55 orders of French fries and 43 orders of tortilla chips) pulled from food service establishments across 14 U.S. states under routine conditions.
– Celiac Disease Foundation, published in Nutrients
The headline finding: 93.9% of samples came in under 20 ppm gluten, including every single tortilla chip sample. Only 6.1% exceeded the threshold, and all of those were French fries (roughly 11% of fry orders). Fryer management mattered too: none of the samples from sites that replaced their oil daily went over 20 ppm, versus four of 35 from sites replacing oil weekly.
Before you order the fries, note the authors' own caution.
"This study is not a green light to eat from any shared fryer," said Vanessa Weisbrod, Chief Programs Officer at the Celiac Disease Foundation and lead author of the study.
"For people with celiac disease, dining decisions are rarely as simple as 'safe' or 'unsafe,'" said Meghan McKeon, MS, RD, CSDH, Senior Director of Education at the Foundation.
Why it matters: this gives you something concrete to bring to your care team. Asking a restaurant how often they change their fryer oil is now an evidence-informed question, not just an anxious one. And when you are scouting places to eat, the community-reviewed Find Me Gluten Free site and app remains one of the handier tools for finding restaurants and travel options that take cross-contact seriously. We are not sponsored by them; it is just genuinely useful.
🩸 Better answers after diagnosis
Blood proteins may offer new clues to gut health in celiac disease tackles one of the most frustrating parts of living with celiac: not knowing whether your gut is actually healing on the diet. Researchers at the University of Oslo ran proteomics on 264 blood and tissue samples collected at Rikshospitalet between 2018 and 2024, and identified 24 blood proteins associated with celiac disease, including nine tied to the extent of intestinal damage.
– University of Oslo / Medical Xpress
Protein patterns differed between untreated patients and healthy individuals, and shifted after a year on a gluten-free diet. But here is the part that will resonate: some patients still showed slightly elevated levels, pointing to residual inflammation even with careful adherence.
"Many people with celiac disease are very diligent in following the diet, but they still live with uncertainty because the blood tests do not always give clear answers about how the disease is progressing," says Jostein Holen Ibsen, a Ph.D. fellow and physician at the Norwegian Coeliac Disease Research Centre.
"The findings therefore suggest that patients have some inflammation in the gut even when they follow the diet," Ibsen says.
The practical takeaway: standard anti-tTG IgA and total IgA monitoring becomes less informative once you start the diet, which is exactly when many patients most want reassurance. These biomarkers could eventually complement (not replace) current monitoring, pending further validation. Worth flagging to your gastroenterologist as something on the horizon.
👶 A pediatric gut marker to watch
Blood Protein Claudin-3 Emerges as a Window Into the Leaky Gut of Adolescents with Functional Digestive Disorders is one for parents and pediatric clinicians. The case-control study in Pediatric Research looked at whether the blood protein claudin-3 could serve as an objective marker of gut-barrier disruption in adolescents aged 10 to 18 with functional gastrointestinal disorders.
– Pediatric Research / Scienmag
Kids meeting Rome IV criteria for these disorders had significantly higher serum claudin-3 than healthy controls (p = 0.02), alongside raised inflammatory markers. Claudin-3 correlated with CRP (r = 0.45, p < 0.001) and haptoglobin (r = 0.53, p < 0.001), supporting the idea of a linked gut-barrier-immune axis.
Functional GI complaints in children are common but notoriously hard to pin down objectively, so a non-invasive blood assay that helps stratify patients would be a welcome addition to the diagnostic toolkit. This is celiac-adjacent rather than celiac-specific, but the overlap in symptoms makes it relevant for any family navigating a child's unexplained abdominal pain and bloating.
A few studies this week that touch on how inflammation and the microbiome shape food reactions:
Study may explain why IBD patients react to foods they once tolerated reports in Gastroenterology that gut inflammation can change how gut bacteria break down food, potentially explaining new reactions to dairy or gluten even in remission. In mouse models, inflammation depleted specific bacteria and the effect was transferable via microbiota; restoring the missing bacteria reduced it. – American Gastroenterological Association
Protein puts brakes on intestinal inflammation, UTSW study finds identifies ZBTB44 as a "molecular brake" restraining excessive IFN-gamma-driven immune activity in the colon. It is preclinical, but the pathway could inform future strategies for intestinal inflammation. – UT Southwestern, published in Nature Immunology
Esophageal string test enables noninvasive EoE testing describes a sedation-free way to monitor eosinophilic esophagitis, a condition that often travels alongside celiac. In 22 adults across 42 tests, no adverse events were reported, though it monitors rather than replaces endoscopy. – Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology / Healio
🎧 A new place to listen
Celiac Disease Foundation Announces Inside Celiac, a New Signature Podcast Hosted by Katie Lowes launched this month, with new episodes on the third Thursday of each month. It pairs medical and nutrition experts with patients and advocates, covering the long road to diagnosis, strict gluten-free living, mental health, pediatric celiac, persistent symptoms, and emerging therapies.
– Celiac Disease Foundation
"Living with celiac disease affects so much more than what is on your plate. It shapes how you travel, celebrate, work, parent, and move through the world," said Lowes.
It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, iHeart, and YouTube. For anyone tired of piecing together scattered advice, having a regular, expert-vetted feed covering diagnosis, family life, and research in one place is a real convenience.
💊 On the treatment horizon (briefly)
We covered the CD122 drug trials in depth last week, so just a quick marker here: argenx reported positive Phase 2 topline results for FB102, and First Tracks reported positive Phase 1b Cohort 1 results for ANB033, both during supervised gluten challenges. Both are early, both still require strict gluten avoidance, and detailed data are expected at the International Celiac Disease Symposium in November 2026 and beyond. More to come as the full datasets land.
That is the issue. The through-line this week: more of celiac care is becoming measurable, from fryer ppm to blood proteins to pediatric markers. The more data you can bring to the table, the better your conversations with your care team. Take care of yourselves, and see you next time.