Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) - discussion thread

Milk doesn't contain gluten.

The study by Rowe is about milk protein but it looks to be extremely badly done. It is difficult to know how accurate the report is but apparently there is no test for milk protein intolerance so it was just diagnosed on hunch. People diagnosed on hunch were better after stopping milk. This is the sort of pseudoresearh that we spend most of our time trying to bring to a halt - PACE, SMILE, whatever. We cannot complain about bias in BPS studies unless we are fully aware just how much it affects all studies.

 

Agreed, Typo - I meant to quote milk ( lactose) and gluten. Apologies!

 

But lactose is something different again - not milk protein as in the Rowe study.
We need some proper biology here.

 

which study by Rowe about food proteins? Is there a link to that I missed?

 

Histamine Intolerance and MCAS seem to be used interchangeably but as far as I know there is a difference. I wonder if this is leading to people being misdiagnosed with MCAS (assuming MCAS is a genuinine clinical entity in itself).

 

I am not clear that either of these are meaningful?
A number of foods stimulate histamine release in the GI tract - strawberries and seafood I think most often. Histamine is otherwise a normal mediator in most tissues. MCAS seems to be a category so ill-defined that it has no clinical value.

 

As far as I know some people report sensitivity or allergic reactions to food with high levels of histamine. There has been little research on it but the current findings are somewhat contradictory.

 

I thought it was that the foods stimulated release of histamine. Do any foods actually contain a lot of histamine? Histamine wouldn't produce an allergic reaction as such. Allergy releases histamine through binding of IgE antibodies but for foods I think the histamine release is based on a simpler chemical interaction. But the internet seems to be in total confusion - many of the top hits being contradictory with each other.