Twenty-five per cent of Crohn's disease patients have a mutation in what is called the NOD2 gene, but it is not precisely known how this mutation influences the disease. The latest study by Dr. Marcel Behr, of the Research Institute of the MUHC and McGill University, has provided new insight into how this might occur. The study will be published on July 9th in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The administration of infliximab after intestinal resective surgery was found to be effective at preventing endoscopic and histological recurrence of Crohn's disease, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.

Researchers at McGill University, the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC) and the McGill University and Génome Québec Innovation Centre, along with colleagues at other Canadian and Belgian institutions, have discovered DNA variations in a gene that increases susceptibility to developing Crohn's disease.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a term that refers to both ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD). IBD occurs most frequently in people in their late teens and twenties. There have been cases in children as young as two years old and in older adults in their seventies and eighties; men and women have an equal chance of getting the disease.

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.

A study led by Mayo Clinic has found that infliximab (Remicade®) administered alone (monotherapy) or in combination with azathioprine is a more effective treatment for patients with moderate to severe Crohn's disease than azathioprine alone. These findings were presented today at the 2008 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Meeting.

Scientists report online this week in Nature that they have linked the health of specialized gut immune cells to a gene associated with Crohn's disease, an often debilitating and increasingly prevalent inflammatory bowel disorder.

Neuroendocrine tumors, such as carcinoid tumors, overexpress somatostatin receptors in their membranes. Octreotide is an analogue whose molecule is a shortened version of somatostatin's with a high affinity for these receptors.

A study of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in children has identified a gene that influences whether children get these diseases early in life, and points to a potential new target for treatment.

People with Crohn's disease (CD) are seven-fold more likely to have in their gut tissues the bacterium that causes a digestive-tract disease in cattle called Johne's disease. The role this bacterium may or may not play in causing CD is a top research priority, according to a new report released by the American Academy of Microbiology.

An international consortium of Crohn's disease researchers has combined data from three independent studies to identify 21 new genetic variants associated with the inflammatory bowel disorder, bringing the total number of risk factors to 32.

New research has trebled the number of genetic regions known to be implicated in Crohn's disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease, to over thirty.