A link between Farm Animals and Chrones Disease?

Some recent research suggests that Early exposure to farm animals lowers the risk of Chrones Disease or ulcerative colitis (IBD)

The conclusions of a German study published in the journal Pediatrics say that if you are exposed to farm animals often when a child or baby you are less likely than others to develop Chrones disease or ulcerative colitis during your childhood. This is according to the findings .

Chrones Disease in Germany
In Germany there are over 10000 children and young adults who suffer from either chrones disease or ulcerative colitis (inflammatory bowel disease / IBD) according to Dr. Katja Radon at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.

Chrones Disease in the first world
In industrialized countries like the UK, Germany and the USA, there has been a recent increase in Crohn's disease (a type of inflammatory bowel disease) suggests that there are environmental factors that contribute to chrones disease.

The German team examined the link between contact with farm animals as a baby and the development of Chrones disease or ulcerative colitis in childhood. The findings were analysed for 748 people with IBD, 444 with Chrones disease, 304 with ulcerative colitis and 1,481 healthy children who were used as the control.

The restults showed that the children with inflammatory bowel disease were more likely than the control children to live in urban areas and regular contact with farm animals during the first year of life was inversely associated with IBD, the investigators report.

The children with chrones disease or ulcerative colitis were about 50 percent less likely to have regular contact with farm animals in infancy compared with the healthy children.So these findings seem to indicate that contact with farm animal during infancy is one of the major factors protecting children against allergies and might also decrease the risk of Chrones Disease or ulcerative colitis in children Radon's team concludes. The findings also back up the theory that allergic diseases and IBD might have similar paths of development.

Chrones Disease source: Pediatrics, August 2007.

Chrones Disease: It is still a mystery but can be controlled

When Jessica Leach was only 12 when she started having frequent attacks of painful abdominal cramps and was only later to find out that it was Chrons disease, she is now 19 years old and initially, she didn't tell anyone about the pain or the diarrhea.

Jessica would often respond to her parents questions by saying that it was somethiong in the food that didnt agree with her. She could hide it for a while, but soon she began to loose a lot of weight and that was when her parents realised that there must be something really worng and so decided to take her to the doctors.

Initially the doctors first thought that she might have anorexia, which only led to frustration on the behalf of Jessica and her mother. The just goes to show how easy it can be to give the wrong diagnosis of Chrones Disease. After some more blood work and a visit to a gastroenterologist, the family finally got the right diagnosis: Chrones disease.

Jessica's chrones is currently in remission for the second time, the first time lasted for three years and she is hoping like most people who suffer from crohn's disease that her symptoms will never appear again. What ever happens Jessica is adiment that Chrones disease is not going to get her down and want to live her life to the full. She has been working two jobs this summer and she is looking forward to college.

We would like to wish Jessica all the best in the future...

Gene variant raises risk of Chrones disease

At a children's hospital in Philadelphia, Pediatric researchers in a have identified a gene variant that raises the risk of Chrones disease amongst Children.

Some German researchers had also previously found the same gene variant in the adult form of Chrones disease and this new research backs up their findings.

"Because Chrones disease is complex, with multiple genes interacting with each other and with environmental factors, it's important to sort out specific genes and to replicate previous findings," said the study's first author, Robert N. Baldassano, M.D., director of the Center for Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Children's Hospital. "There are different types of Chrones disease, so classifying types by genetic profiles may help us select the most appropriate treatments for each patient."

The comprehensive study compared the genomes of One hundred and forty three children with Chrones disease to genomes of 282 children who did not have the disease. In the results, they discovered that Sixty four percent of children with Crohn's disease had a specific variant form of the gene ATG16L1, compared with 52 percent of the healthy children. The odds ratio for children with the gene variant was 1.62 compared to control children, all this means that children who have the variant are 62 percent more likely to have Chrones disease than children with the more common form.

I guess the more studies done like this will all lead to more understanding of Chrones disease and hopefully lead to better treatments and possibly a cure one day.