The tonsils and lymphoid tissues in the intestinal tract that help protect the body from external pathogens are the home base of a rare immune cell newly identified by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The research team led by Levent Erdem from Şişli Etfal Teaching and Research Hospital of Turkey investigated the prevalence and demography of microscopic colitis in patients with diarrhea of unknown etiology and normal colonoscopy in Turkey. This will be published on 21 July 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question.

Ischemic injury to the bowel is a well known disease entity that has a wide spectrum of pathological and clinical findings. A sudden drop in the colonic blood supply is key to its development. However, chronic venous insufficiency by obstruction of macrovascular mesenteric vein rarely causes ischemia of the bowel.

In rats with experimental colitis, the marked increase in bacterial translocation in postcolitis rats has been reversed by melatonin administration. This is due to melatonin's anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects.

In a series of mouse experiments, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have pinpointed a specific immune deficiency as the likely fundamental cause of ulcerative colitis, a chronic, sometimes severe inflammatory disease of the colon or large intestine that afflicts half a million Americans.

For immune cells known as T cells to be effective they must home to the site of an infection. Similarly, for T cells to inappropriately mount an immune response and cause diseases such as colitis they must traffic to the site of the disease.

An important finding, which could eventually lead to a new therapeutic approach for treating autoimmune and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, colitis, psoriasis and others, was announced today by researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology (LIAI).