Bacteria Imbalance in Digestive Tract Could Induce Crohn's Disease Symptoms

Your digestive tract contains an extraordinary amount of bacterial cells. Some are good for you and some are bad, but both kinds are essential for a healthy digestive system. An imbalance of these bacteria could lead to Crohn's disease.

Those who possess more harmful gut bacteria have a greater likelihood of developing Crohn's disease, and antibiotics might worsen the symptoms, a team of researchers from hospitals across the country concluded in their study. Lead author Dr. Ramnik Xavier provides the details of the findings.

Crohn's disease causes chronic inflammation of the digestive tract and it cannot be cured. It typically causes blockage of the intestine due to swelling and scar tissue, resulting in abdominal pain, diarrhea, and rectal bleeding. Many other complications can result from the illness. There is also no concrete way to diagnose the disease that affects 700,000 people nationwide. More information about Crohn's disease can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

The researchers examined 447 intestinal tissue samples of patients who were diagnosed with Crohn's disease and 221 samples from people who did not have the disease, but suffered from abdominal pain or diarrhea. They also examined over 1,700 samples from previously conducted studies to diversify the sample pool.

They found that people with Crohn's disease possessed more inflammatory bacteria in their intestines as well as fewer bacteria related to non-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory properties. This imbalance, as opposed to simply just possessing more bacteria than another, revealed that these patients were more likely to have Crohn's disease.

Current treatments for Crohn's include antibiotics and decreasing/altering immune function to dispel the inflammatory disease. However, the researchers also found that administering antibiotics actually exacerbates the bacterial imbalance, thus worsening the inflammation. The researchers' findings could help provide better future treatments for Crohn's.

To read more about the study, visit this Live Science article.