Chrones Disease Video

I found this video the other day, it is a touching story of a guy with Chrones Disease. The backing music is by Perl Jam - the reason for this and is not something I knew until now is that the Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready suffers from Chrones Disease.

He announced this news way back in 2003 and said that he has had the stomach ailment for the past 15 years, so 20 years now. The reason he decided to go public with the news was because of the strength of a young teenager who'd suffered through 6 surgeries because of chrones and still had a long way to go.

During his speech, Mike McCready recountered a particularly embarrassing incident to demonstrate how Chrones can strike at any time. He said that whilst playing onstage, he is always aware of where the bathrooms are "When Crohn's hits, I have to run, or it won't be pretty. It happened when we opened up for the Rolling Stones in 1997 in Oakland .

"It was our first show with them," McCready continues. "Five minutes before we went on, I went up to (Pearl Jam front man) Eddie Vedder and I said, 'Look man, can we play 'Sometimes'? — which is a slower song that I'm not really on. I was in pain. I went running offstage looking for a bathroom, and there wasn't one. Then, all of a sudden, there was one. It was a honey bucket. I heard my band play that song from inside a portable toilet!" something every chrones disease sufferer knows all to well!

Tysabri Approved for Chrones Disease Treatment

People with Chrones Disease have some excellent news in that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a drug called Tysabri (natalizumab) to treat people with chrones disease who have not yet responded to other forms of treatment.

Tysabri has potentially some pretty serious side effects and because of this people with chrones disease who are using the drug Tysabri will also be enrolled in a program that restricts distribution called Crohn's Disease-Tysabri Outreach Unified Commitment to Health (CD-TOUCH). Some of the possible side effects of Tysabri include anaphylactic reactions,possible liver injury, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (a viral infection that affects the brain. This viral infection could cause severe disability or even death.)

The CD-TOUCH program will allow physicians to check people with chrones disease that are using Tysabri after three months, if there is no sign of improvement Tysabri will no longer be perscribed.

Tysabri was approved way back in 2006 for the treatment of patients suffering from elapsing multiple sclerosis and now has to go ahead to be used on Chrones Disease sufferers. It is produced by Elan, a company based in Ireland as well as Biogen Idec in the US and will used on patients with chrones who have yet to respond to any other forms of treatment


What is Chrones Disease?
Chrones Disease affects the bowel. It is incurable and the symptoms include diarrhea, fever, rectal bleeding, malnutrition, narrowing of the intestines, cramping, and abdominal pain. More than 1 million people around the world have chrones disease.

The disease can also lead to abnormal connections in the gut which are called fistulas these connections grow from the intestines to the skin or internal organs.

Details of the Drug
Drug Name: TYSABRI (Brand Name Drug)
Company: BIOGEN IDEC
FDA Application No. (BLA) 125104
Active Ingredient: NATALIZUMAB
Original Approval or Tentative Approval Date: November 23, 2004

Do Additives Cause Chrones Disease Problems ?

In Australia, some research has found that infant milk formula containing added fruit sugars could be the cause to some stomach disorders like Chrones disease, irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis in children.

Apparently, some of the new children's milk formula, including big brands like Nutricia and Aptamil contain prebiotics which are supposed to improve the digestion such as fructose could actually be doing more harm that good. This is especially the case for children who may already be susceptible to diseases like Chrones disease.

A Gastroenterology expert, Prof Peter Gibson is concerned about the trend towards adding prebiotics to children's formula. He says that "Excessive intake of sugars that escape digestion and absorption in the small intestine contribute to susceptibility and symptom generation in Chrones disease, irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis."

In the Western diet, The excessive intake of these sugars is common, This could possibly be one of the reasons why Chrones disease is so uncommon in places like Africa?

People with Chrones disease or IBS who remove these foods from their diet seem to get allot better. Prof Peter Gibson's team measured the prebiotic contents of food in the Australian diet in order to generate a nutritional database. The study found more than half of the 52 patients with Chrons disease who removed prebiotics from their food improved their symptoms. So it seems that prebiotics which provide good bacteria to maintain good digestive health but are likely to make Chrones disease and IBS symptoms worse.

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.

It is better to get Chrones Disease in 2007 than in 1987

Affecting nearly 1 million people around the world, Chrones disease is a chronic inflammation of the bowel and intestines. People who have Chrones disease often have diarrhea and abdominal pain. About 80% of people with Chrones disease will also eventually will face some sort of surgery to remove damaged portions of bowel.

Having said all that, there is some good news, as the science finally catches up with chrones disease with modern treatments like anti-inflammatory medications called TNF blockers which have had very good results for many patients.

Two new chrones disease drugs are about to hit the market, so things could and should soon improve further for Crohn's disease patients.

In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee recommended approval of the drug called Tysabri as a medication for Chrones disease. Tysabri is already used for treating patients with multiple sclerosis. This recommendation will allow the FDA to move toward approval of Tysabri for Chrones.

The second new drug is called Cimzia, which was effective at treating about one-third of 1,330 patients with moderate to severe Chrones disease in testing. As well as this, 62% of the chrones patients who responded to Cimzia continued to benefit from the treatment after 6 months. The Belgian company who is developing Cimzia is planning to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee soon.

So there is hopefully some good news on the horizon for Chrones Disease sufferers.