Hello, my fellow Crohnies! I hope you're all doing well.
I've been perusing reddit quite a bit in the past month, and being that I'm in a flare (well, coming out of one now, thanks to Humira), I would keep an eye out for anything Crohn's-related. I never really saw much until tonight. I feel obliged to share this info with you all.
Reddit is host to many different kinds of people, and there are many subforums for virtually anything you can think of. There's a subforum called "Ask Me Anything" which is when someone answers other users' questions. Barack Obama, Buzz Aldrin, Bill Gates, and Neil deGrasse Tyson have answered questions, just to name a few.
So, on to the Crohn's. A user with a PhD in medical science who also has Crohn's recently posted this golden nugget of information:
"I don't have too much time. Therefore, a very simplified answer: it has been shown in the last ten years that Crohn's is not an autoimmune disease (which always seemed absurd) but rather the result of a barrier dysfunction. That means that the immune system in CD patients overreacts not because it is intrinsically broken but because it comes permanently into contact with bacteria when it shouldn't - because the intestinal barrier fails to keep the normal commensal bacteria away from it. Many genetic mutations associated with CD (NOD2, ATG16L1 etc.) have been linked to Paneth cell dysfunction: these cells reside at the bottom of the intestinal crypt and among other things secrete defensins which keep the crypts bacteria-free and regulate the microbiome.
In consequence, the problem with FT in this case is that microbial changes in Crohn's does not just happen by chance. Crohn's does not work like C. diff infection where we basically have an exogenously pertubated microbiome. Instead, the microbiome in CD is endogenously pertubated because the intestinal epithelium/Paneth cells is unable to create the right microenvironment for a healthy microbiome. Therefore, it is well possible that FT is correcting the microbiome in CD patients only transiently at most.
A good review about how everything is connected in CD is Knights et al. Gut 2013 ("Advances in inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis: linking host genetics and the microbiome")."
He was responding to an inquiry about the effectiveness of fecal transplants, hence the reference to "FT."
I've been perusing reddit quite a bit in the past month, and being that I'm in a flare (well, coming out of one now, thanks to Humira), I would keep an eye out for anything Crohn's-related. I never really saw much until tonight. I feel obliged to share this info with you all.
Reddit is host to many different kinds of people, and there are many subforums for virtually anything you can think of. There's a subforum called "Ask Me Anything" which is when someone answers other users' questions. Barack Obama, Buzz Aldrin, Bill Gates, and Neil deGrasse Tyson have answered questions, just to name a few.
So, on to the Crohn's. A user with a PhD in medical science who also has Crohn's recently posted this golden nugget of information:
"I don't have too much time. Therefore, a very simplified answer: it has been shown in the last ten years that Crohn's is not an autoimmune disease (which always seemed absurd) but rather the result of a barrier dysfunction. That means that the immune system in CD patients overreacts not because it is intrinsically broken but because it comes permanently into contact with bacteria when it shouldn't - because the intestinal barrier fails to keep the normal commensal bacteria away from it. Many genetic mutations associated with CD (NOD2, ATG16L1 etc.) have been linked to Paneth cell dysfunction: these cells reside at the bottom of the intestinal crypt and among other things secrete defensins which keep the crypts bacteria-free and regulate the microbiome.
In consequence, the problem with FT in this case is that microbial changes in Crohn's does not just happen by chance. Crohn's does not work like C. diff infection where we basically have an exogenously pertubated microbiome. Instead, the microbiome in CD is endogenously pertubated because the intestinal epithelium/Paneth cells is unable to create the right microenvironment for a healthy microbiome. Therefore, it is well possible that FT is correcting the microbiome in CD patients only transiently at most.
A good review about how everything is connected in CD is Knights et al. Gut 2013 ("Advances in inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis: linking host genetics and the microbiome")."
He was responding to an inquiry about the effectiveness of fecal transplants, hence the reference to "FT."