What Is Crohn's Disease?
Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. The disease affects the mucous membrane of the intestinal wall and penetrates into the deeper layers of the intestinal wall. It is an autoimmune disease. Usually, the immune system protects against unwanted invaders (bacteria and viruses). In an autoimmune disease, the immune system sees healthy body tissue for intruders. As a reaction, your body makes antibodies and goes into attack. This causes an inflammation. The inflammation often occurs at the end of the small intestine and the onset of the large intestine.
Develop a Test for Crohn's Disease
With a view to new individual treatment methods, the results are positive, according to Sheikh. "Hopefully we can develop a test that will determine which subtype Crohn has a patient in the future. Then we can use a treatment specifically aimed at this subtype. "
Types Of Crohn's Disease
Sheikh and colleagues discovered two subtypes of the disease by analyzing the intestinal tissue of 21 patients. They saw that each of the types had a unique pattern in genetic engineering and with different visible properties. One type was in part comparable to the intestinal build-up of a 'healthy' patient. In the other type they saw a pattern in the genes that are typically characteristic of the ileum. This last part of the small intestine is also called the small intestine.
Can crohns disease be cured?
Patients who have Crohn often get the same treatment now. Because there is no treatment yet that permanently removes the cause, these are often medicines. These do not match anyone as well. According to researcher Sheikh, this is very plausible, as it could just be that they have a different subtype of the disease.