New research by the University of Adelaide could help explain why some people are more prone to Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and other autoimmune diseases.
A critical imbalance of the regulatory cells required to control the immune system has been revealed among people suffering inflammatory bowel disease.
This is an interesting new study. The paper, published in the "Journal of Clinical Immunology" shows that people with Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis have fewer Immune System regulating cells, and more immune system fighting cells.
After this imbalance the body is treating the food we eat as a pathogen, instead of having the regulatory cells just accept that it is good food.
Dr. Eastaff-Leung also adds some information about what I have head of as the hygiene hypothesis, where some people think that the modern Western lifestyle has reduced the amount of germs around people in their formative years, causing them to be more susceptible to certain immune diseases.
Personally, I am pretty skeptical of this. I attended school with a bunch of other kids, spent a good amount of time outside in the germy world, and had pet cats in the house growing up.
Everyone in my family has allergies and quite a few have gastrointestinal related things as well. I think there is more to it that either diet, lifestyle, or how clean your house is growing up.
And at any rate - would you trade the types of germ borne diseases that come from the primitive lifestyle with our modern lifestyle? I don't think so. I enjoy having clean water for one.
I think there may be a dearth of diagnosis of Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis in some other countries because it is hard to diagnose. People are probably suffering from it and don't know what they have, just like I did for many years.
But at any rate, I welcome this study for its implication that there might be a blood test we can develop to test if there is an imbalance of immune regulatory cells. Also, if we can test for this perhaps we can develop a treatment to increase the number of healthy regulatory cells.
I wonder if a stem cell treatment could increase the regulatory cells. So many of the current treatments we have for Crohn's Disease suppress the immune system. The problem with that is that the immune system is then not working as well. This increases the risk of certain types of infections, and also seems to increase the risk of some types of cancer. Many people are glad to take this risk in order to be able to live their life! I would too, if my symptoms get worse for a long time.
However, what if there were a way to put the immune system in a better balance, instead of just tamping down on the whole thing?
An interesting idea. I vote we increase funding on stem cell research and keep working on learning exactly how the components of the immune system work.