Crohn's Disease

Extract

[...] In one study, PCE-SSO techniques were used to molecularly type individual alleles of all DRB1, DRB3, DRB4, and DRB5 loci and to compare the frequence of the known alleles among ethnically matched populations consisting of 40 ulcerative colitis patients Crohn's disease patients, and 93 healthy controls. The diagnosis of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease was documents in 82 patients seen at the Center for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by endoscopic, histological, and clinical criteria. All patients were Caucasian. [...]

[...] Crohn's Disease Crohn's Disease is a form of ileitis, or inflammation of the ileum, which is the terminal portion of the small intestine. It is characterized by abdominal pain, ulceration, and fibrous tissue buildup in the terminal portion of the ileum. This is a relatively new disease, with proper medical diagnoses dating back only to the 1960s. Although Crohn, Ginzberg, and Oppenheimer described it in 1932 as a chronic, low grade inflammation of the terminal ileum, in 1960 it was recognized that the same disorder affected the colon and had been confused with ulcerative colitis. [...]

[...] The etiology (the cause or origin of a disease or disorder as determined by medical diagnosis) of Crohn's Disease remains unknown. However, there is agreement that cytokines play important roles in manifestations of the disease (Gilberts, et al, 1994). One study hypothesized that the host immune response would differ between the two forms of Crohn's disease, in an analogous manner to the difference between two different forms of leprosy that have already been established. There were three groups of patients; control, perforating, and non- perforating. [...]