Crohn's Disease

Crohn’s Disease was named after an American gastroenterologist, Dr. Burrill Bernard Crohn, in 1932. He and his colleagues discovered an abnormal pathogen, Mycobacterium paratuberculosis while studying a related disease, ulcerative colitis, which belongs to a larger group if illnesses called Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The discovery was made while studying the effects of ulcerative colitis in cattle and noticing the similar characteristics in humans. The infections had an abnormal response with the body’s immune system in both the cattle and humans.

So what is Crohn’s Disease? It isn’t a physically crippling disease a person may visually see upon first glance when meeting another individual. It is a debilitating disorder that slowly and painfully deteriorates the digestive organs and its accessory organs. It causes inflammation of the digestive tract from the mouth to the anus, referred to as the gastrointestinal tract, (GI). Most commonly the disease affects the lower part of the small intestine called the ileum and the cecum of the large intestine. Crohn’s disease causes ulcerations and breaks in the lining of the small and large intestine. These breaks in the lining are caused by the body’s inappropriate immune response. Microbes, the good bacteria, are seen by the immune system as invaders so the body sends out white blood cells, the army, to combat these invaders. The white blood cells try hard to clear out the bacteria, the good microbes and doesn’t know when to stop. Mistakenly, the two groups produce a chronic inflammation within the lining of the wall of the intestine, which leads to ulcerations and scar tissue, resulting with a damaged digestive tract.

Crohn’s disease runs in families. Siblings of infected pa...

... middle of paper ...

...ing but there is still no known cure for this disease. Therapies can greatly reduce the signs and symptoms and may even bring about long term remission. Drugs may temporarily keep the disease from spreading. However, the disease continues to lie dormant within an individual waiting for an opportunity to continue on its course of destruction and pain. Maybe, one day soon, someone will find the cure.

Works Cited

http://www.med.umich.edu/ibd/glossary.htm

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/library/crohns-disease/DS00104.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001400/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrill_Bernard_Crohn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOD2

http://www.everydayhealth.com/crohns-disease/crohns-causes.aspx

http://www.aframnews.com/websitepublisher/articles/unpopular-crohn%E2%80%99s-disease- challenging-to-african-american-youth-and-young-adults.html