Crohn's disease

Crohn's disease

Crohn's disease is an immune-mediated severe chronic disease of unclear etiology, which has many pathological manifestations, the main of which is inflammation of the entire gastrointestinal tract. It is quite rare, but every year 2-3 people out of 1000 become infected with it. What are the causes of the disease, symptoms, primary manifestations and how to treat it? This and many other things related to this topic will now be discussed.

Causes

 As already mentioned, the etiology of this disease is not fully understood. But scientists have identified several factors that are provoking. Among them:

• genetic predisposition. So far, a direct connection with one or another HLA antigen has not yet been elucidated. Only a mutation of the CARD15 gene was registered in most cases, which is responsible for encoding a protein with a caspase activation domain.
• Heredity. According to statistics, most often homozygous twins and siblings are more likely to have Crohn's disease, the symptoms of which will be discussed later. Also, in 17% of reported cases of the disease, people had blood relatives who also suffer from it.
• Infectious factors. It is believed that the disease is bacterial or viral in nature. Experiments made it possible to find out that its development is influenced by the pathogenic bacterium Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis, which also causes Yone's disease in animals (including primates). However, this is only a theory, not yet 100% proven.
• Immunological factors. The fact that systemic organ damage occurs in Crohn's disease has led scientists to think about the autoimmune nature of the disease. The theory was not formulated in a vacuum. In patients, an increase in T-lymphocytes, the appearance of antibodies to cow's milk protein, Escherichia coli and lipopolysaccharides are indeed recorded. And during periods of exacerbations, immune complexes appear in their blood. Perhaps some specific antigen leads to such consequences.

It should also be noted that most often this disease occurs among residents of North America and Northern Europe. It most affects people between the ages of 15 and 35.

What happens when you get sick?

As a rule, the lesion is intermittent. The affected area is followed by the normal area, then the affected area again, and so on.

Symptoms of Crohn's disease include the following:

• Erosion of various forms.
• Stenoses. This is the name of the narrowing, in which the segment of the intestine becomes hard and thickened.
• Ulcers of different depth. They also have a discontinuous nature. Ulcerations alternate with normal mucosa. By the way, doctors call this sign “cobblestone pavement”.
• Fistula. This is the name of the pathological opening - a channel that forms a message between tissues and different organs.
• Lymphedema.
• Inflammation affecting all the membranes of the intestine.

epithelial granuloma. This is an inflammation accompanied by the appearance of plaques, consisting of a mass of cells of epithelial origin.

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