Link between Crohn's Disease & Refrigerators

[nogutsnoglory]

"French doctors hypothesize that maybe bacteria in refrigerated food play in important role in Crohn’s disease.
It is already known that mutations in one of the immune system genes predispose people towards Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory condition of the gut. Researchers at the Hospital Robert Debre, Paris, point out that the growth in widespread use of refrigerators has paralleled the emergence of Crohn’s disease in the second half of the 20th century."

http://www.tele-management.ca/2013/08/link-between-crohns-disease-and-refrigerators/

 

[rollinstone]

kiny posted something like this before, can't really argue with the paralleled stats, its more than coincidental

 

[kiny]

Yes, it's the cold chain hypothesis.

It suggest that we get infected with psychrotrophic bacteria during the cold chain and susceptible people get crohn's disease.

The cold chain refers to the cold chain food goes through during processing and storing, it refers to domestic refrigerators, but also to industrial freezing before it's bought in shops.

It's not a bad theory because it is able to explain a few things:

-the first crohn's disease cases were documented in 1913, when Dalziel wrote his paper, that happens to also be when domestic refrigeration started

-people who are richer got more crohn's disease in the past, people who are richer could afford refrigerators sooner

-crohn's disease has a north-south gradient, psychotropic bacteria are more common in the north

-crohn's disease occurs in countries around the time they industrialise, which is also when they start to use refrigerators

-many of those bacteria are intracellular


Of course, the issue is still, no one seems to be able to find psychotropic bacteria in every person with crohn's disease with high consistency, yersinia or listeria are checked for but not found regularly. We shouldn't ignore that crohn's disease might not be one single disease though.