Blood antibodies patterns can help doctors identify people at risk of inflammatory intestine disease up to ten years before the show of symptoms, suggests a new study, The Guardian reported.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerous colitis are two major forms of inflammatory intestinal disease. They cause chronic inflammation of the digestive leaf and can be accompanied by stomach pain, diarrhea, and fatigue. Treatment usually begins after symptoms appear, times when intestine damage may already have begun.
However, new findings suggest that the immune system can provide warning signals many years before the diagnosis, creating opportunities for early identification of endangered persons.
For a long time, we could only treat the inflammatory inflammatory disease of the intestines after the injury happened, and for many people it’s too late, said Dr. Arno Bougnje of the Groningen University Medical Center in the Netherlands and the School of Medicine in Mount Sinai in New York.
He has stressed that the disease may begin years before symptoms appear and that the immune system leaves traces that may be discovered earlier. However, Bongnje has clarified that this approach cannot yet be used to predict with certainty whether one will develop the disease.
For the study, the research team examined 2,000 blood samples from 500 members of the U.S. Army. Of them, 200 later developed Crohn’s disease – 200 ulcers – while 100 did not develop any of these diseases.
Researchers analyzed antibodies, which are produced by the immune system in response to bacteria, viruses, food, and proteins in the organism itself, to identify models that may be linked to the development of inflammatory intestinal diseases.
In those who later developed Crohn’s disease, more frequently were observed anti-Virus Epstein-Barr virus, which can cause infectious mononucleosis. These differences were evident up to ten years before the diagnosis, while the signal was stronger in those who later developed the most serious forms of the disease.
Meanwhile, another pattern of antibodies, including antibodies against one of the body’s own protein, was identified in the people who developed ulcers.
The findings have been published in the scientific magazine R.G.A. and have been presented at a European conference of gastroenterology in Barcelona. However, researchers point out that the results must be confirmed in other groups of people. The study records a link between antibodies and disease development, but does not prove that infections cause them.
Gastroenterology professor James Lindsay, who was not involved in the study, has said that research provides important knowledge of the causes of Crohn’s disease and ulceral colitis, and can help identify endangered persons. However, he has warned that these methods remain research tools and are not yet available for ordinary use in hospitals.
Meanwhile, scientist Marinanne Radcliffe has expressed hope that early identification of endangered persons will, in the future, enable treatment before the intestine damage, even preventing or delaying disease development.
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