Medicine: Crohn's inflammation a response to bacteria?
A study in the Lancet shows that a mycobacterium avium subspecies can be cultured from the blood of a really high number of people w/ Crohn's. Will macrolides replace prednisone? Stay tuned! I'm sure you non-medical people love this one. Read the article, it's not in quite such jibberish.
2 comments:
I sure hope something comes along to replace prednisone, actually it already has, I don't know what type but they have started to you drugs like Imurane more and more but then imurane is supposed to have a possible side affect of severe liver damage. So something other than the imurane type drugs would be very nice.
Actually reading that article now makes little sense. Crohn's is more than a bowel irritant, that is simply a side affect from all the bacteria in your colon. Other large side affects of Crohn's incluse severe joint pain much like arthritis and open sores or cysts all over the body. Crohn's has more to do with the bodies defensive system, wherein is does not distinguish between good and bad bacteria, and thus attacks it all.
kevin swikert
howdy kev,
actually the article isn't saying that it's the bacteria per se that is causing the inflammation, but as you say, the body's immune response. so, exposure to this bacteria would cause the immune system to "learn" how to fight it--but the problem comes when the body takes its new found "knowledge" and attacks something that looks a heck of a lot like the bad bacteria, but happens to be your GI tract.
Persistent bacterial infection would cause your body to be constantly "relearning" to attack that antigen. So possibly by putting Crohn's patients like yourself on a macrolide like erithromycin or azithromycin could rid the body of the persistent infection. This is a disease model that's becoming more and more widespread as we learn more about auto-immune disorders. Anti-inflammatories like prednisone sadly won't be going anywhere, or their side-effects, but this sort of discovery gives researchers and clinicians a new starting point to work on alternative approach therapies.
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