Possible future IBD treatment

[JLH]

http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/ ... type=HWCIT

This article came in my pay subscription in an easier version but I don't think everyone can access it. I'll try the link though. The medical journal article is free....

http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_chann ... ryid=23338

[MaggieRedwings]

Morning Joan,

Very informative article. Someday our cure will come.

Love, Maggie

[JLH]

I hope it's in my life time.........

[tex]

Joan,

Both links worked fine, for me. This is an interesting theory, and may indeed hold a lot of promise as another type of treatment for MC. IMO, of course, it is just another approach for treating the symptoms, rather than treating the cause of the disease. Of course, that's certainly a lot better than nothing, but it will probably rely on a lifetime treatment program with probiotics, since we are well aware that, unless a major breakthrough in probiotic technology comes along, introduced probiotics do not colonize the gut for more than a very short period of time - they are not capable of establishing a permanent, sustainable population. I predict that if this turns out to be an effective treatment for suppressing the symptoms of IBDs, Big Pharma will see to it that these probiotic treatments will be available by prescription only. (Note that this approach has already been labeled as "novel", so they already have their big proverbial pharmaceutical foot in the FDA door, so to speak). LOL.

This entire area of research is apparently hinged on the observation that:

Decreases in members of the butyrate-producing clostridial clusters IV and XIVa have been reproducibly reported in the gut of IBD patients

Well, obviously, that is not necessarily proof that a deficiency of butyric acid-producing anaerobic bacteria is the cause of the inflammation present in IBDs, any more than the deficiency of electrolytes, B-vitamins, etc., so common with IBD patients, is a cause of the disease. The deficiency of butyric acid-producing anaerobic bacteria, in the colons of IBD patients may well turn out to be just another symptom of the disease. There's even a chance that the deficiency of these bacteria, may simply be due to the possibility that these particular strains of bacteria, are the ones that are targeted by the immune system, when the autoimmune reactions are initiated. IOW, they might be the trigger for the autoimmune reaction. That would certainly explain why their populations are depressed, in IBD patientis. If that's the case, then increasing the numbers of those bacteria might simply result in a stronger response by the immune system, resulting in more intestinal damage. While using animal models is certainly beneficial for research purposes, the results obviously cannot always be transposed for human use. The point is, the fact that those bacteria exist at suppressed population levels in the colons of IBD patients, is not prima facie evidence that this is a cause of the disease. The odds of probability, say that it is a symptom, instead.

Professor Filip Van Immerseel, a medical microbiologist from Ghent University in Belgium, was quoted as saying,"Conventional drug therapy has limited effectiveness and considerable side effects. Probiotics are live bacterial supplements or food ingredients, which when taken in sufficient numbers confer health benefits to the host."

I believe that it is only fair to point out that while the above statement is generally true, ingesting bacteria is not entirely without risk, either. We are all different, and we all have different bacterial population distributions in our intestines. Regulation of these populations is the duty of the immune system, and when the immune system is already overloaded, and causing autoimmune reactions, can we always trust it to properly regulate intestinal bacteria population balances, when we intentionally try to distort that balance?

That said, the empirical evidence does indeed suggest that such a probiotic treatment might offer a form of relief from IBD symptoms, but I don't believe that this will prove to be some sort of panacea for IBD patients, since it appears to target a symptom, rather than a cause for the disease.

Thanks for posting this. A copy of this should be posted in the "Current Research" forum, also.

Tex