New research has found a substantial and sustained increase in cases of childhood inf

[Igor_Passau]

The report also shows that Ireland has one of the highest rates of the disease in the world.

It says the reasons for the rise in Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis in children are elusive and need further research.

One of the authors of the report was Dr Seamus Hussey, a consultant paediatric gastroenterologist at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin.

Dr Hussey said the increase has occurred over a relatively short period of time and the findings have important implications for health policy.

The multi-centre Irish team said new cases have increased by 90% over the last ten years.

Around 120 new cases in children have been diagnosed at Crumlin over the past 18 months.

The research paper 'Rapid rise in incidence of paediatric inflammatory bowel disease' is published in the journal 'The Archives of Disease in Childhood'.

Among the potential causes of the increase that have to be examined are lifestyle changes, increased consumption of low-fibre and high-sugar diets, rising obesity rates, sunlight exposure, difference between urban and rural living, and vitamin D deficiency.

An accompanying editorial says the implications are particularly worrisome given the low level of consultant paediatric gastroenterologists and nurse specialists in Ireland.

The research team came from the Our Lady's Children's Hospital National Centre for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and the National Children's Research Centre in Crumlin, the School of Medicine and the Conway Institute at UCD and the National Children's Hospital at Tallaght.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0702/childhood-inflammatory-bowel-disease.html

 

[Igor_Passau]

90% over the last ten years.
Please see the Video!

 

[kiny]

People in ireland drink raw untreated and unpasteurised milk, they don't even heat it, you have to wonder if these two aren't directly related.

What's even worse is that they have organisations that promote the use of raw milk because they believe it actually helps them, (I bet it's just because it's cheaper for farmers though). Ignoring that Ireland has one of the highest number of crohn's disease people in the world.

http://www.rawmilkireland.com/

 

[Mark in Seattle]

Just incredible - 90% increase in 10 years. There's got to be a smoking gun there for some smart sleuthing types to figure out.

I wonder if there's some kind of microbe in their dairy unique to their geography. I tried Kerrygold cheese recently (Irish grass-fed cheese from Whole Food Market) and even small amounts made me flare terribly.

Igor, you're a research-posting powerhouse. Superb job with all of your posts!!

 

[Xiaofa Qin]

I was not surprised at all to this increase. Sucralose was approved in Ireland in 2003 and this rapid rise in Irish paediatric inflammatory bowel disease occurred since middle 2000s shortly after that. It would be just what was predicted in the paper I wrote that was published in World Journal of Gastroenterology in April 21 (Qin X. Etiology of inflammatory bowel disease: a unified hypothesis. World J Gastroenterol. 2012 Apr 21;18(15):1708-22), just ten days before the release of this study online in May 1, 2012. Here is a response to this study I wrote in May 16, 2012 (adc.bmj.com/content/early/2012/04/30/archdischild-2011-300651/reply).

 

[Mark in Seattle]

Interesting. I used to eat canned peaches, pears, etc. every day as a kid. I don't know whether the cans I ate used heavy syrup or sucralose. Now I wish I knew which kind I ate. It would be interesting to know. Otherwise I'm not finding many products with sucralose, other than diet soft drinks.

 

[Xiaofa Qin]

Sucralose was approved in US in 1998. Before that the artificial sweetener used in canned foods was most likely saccharin. In fact, after its discovery in later 1870s saccharin was initially used for canned vegetables and fruits, taking advantage of both its high sweetness and its antiseptic property. FDA even put detailed regulations on saccharin use in each of the conned fruits such as canned perch, pears, apricots, cherries, figs, pineapples, etc (thegoodscentscompany.com/data/rw1034461.html), suggesting its heavily use in these products.

 

[kiny]

Hey Xiaofa, if someone has complete mucosal healing after treatment (after TNF inhibitors or antibiotics or whatever), they still often relapse when they go off the medication. If artificial sweeteners are a caustative agent (together with genetics maybe), would they still benefit from avoiding succralose and saccharin or would it only matter in respect to the initial onset of the disease?

 

[Keepingfaith]

Thanks for posting! I know that there are a lot more tools to DX this disease and that people are becoming more persistent to know WHY they are in the ammount of pain they are but that simply is not it. Like stated, I really think the bacteria in these dairy products contribute to CD. Children in public schools in America drink a heck of a lot of milk. Cheap milk at that. I will say, for part of my education I went to a public school and that is when my CD symptoms were at it's worse. Often times the meals had a lot of dairy and the desserts had a lot of HFCS.

I am not stating that milk & processed sugars are the cause of Crohn's nor am I saying diet is the direct cause of CD.

 

[Adam1971]

If raw milk caused crohn's, then rates would be going down, not up, since pasteurization is so common place now in many parts of the world. I personally believe that raw milk is a healthy living food if it comes from a healthy, grass-fed cow. This is just my opinion. Since I have a cow that my family milks, I probably wont be changing my mind on this one. I think it is extremely difficult to be sure about one factor being to blame. We all have our hunches, though.

 

[kiny]

If raw milk caused crohn's, then rates would be going down, not up, since pasteurization is so common place now in many parts of the world.

Pasteurisation doesn't kill M Para, it survives easily, it's slightly higher in raw milk. Boiling it for several minutes kills most. Boiling it and then rapidly cooling it (there's a name for that) kills it even better.

I put up a link somewhere with the stats, it's surviving pasteurisation every time.

Milk that is pasteurised, which you find in shops, is done at about 72-77 degrees celcius for several seconds, it isn't killing MAP, it's in the milk supply.

Still could be other things, the concentrations in milk depend on a few things it seems, some milk are really high, some not so much, maybe because feces with high M Para got into contact with the milk. Then again it might not even be the milk, might be hamburgers from sick cows wich would have far higher concentrations, idk.

 

[kiny]

I found the stats again, you can see it's present in raw milk, (the cow would need to be sick though, your cow might be perfectly healthy, although signs of Johne's disease only show up long after the animal has been infected, 2-3 years later). I don't think checking a cow for JD is that expensive either.

I don't know if the use of raw milk in Ireland is related, I also don't know what exactly else is done to milk outside of pasteurisation, there's a number of steps commercial milk goes through before it's pasteurised, which might be lowering the amount of MAP, not sure.

 

[Xiaofa Qin]

Hi, kiny, sorry for the delay in response. Thank you for your interest in my opinion. You know I am just a research scientist, not a clinical doctor. Here is just my personal thought.

If the patient kept on getting relapse after stopping medication, quite possible the mucosa is not completely back to normal. It is not easy to define a complete healing. For instance, at normal condition, the mucus layer produced by the goblet cells may be more than 50 times in thickness than the single layer of epithelium that separate our body from the bacteria and other damaging agents in the lumen; and it is well documented that the flares in IBD patients are accompanied by a significant reduction in the number of goblet cells. Therefore, the patient may have some signs of healing, such as no more bleeding and no more ulcer on gut surface, re-establishment of a continuous layer of epithelium, or a significant reduction of inflammatory cells in the mucosa, but the number of goblet cells may still just a fraction of normal and so is the mucus layer, thus the bacterial and other luminal components may still easily come in. This also means that a reduction in the mucus layer in IBD patients may not necessarily be caused by a more rapid degradation by the poorly inactivated digestive proteases, it may be also as the result of the reduced production due to the decrease in goblet cells. In addition, once IBD was started, the gut damage also largely depends on the immune reaction. Therefore, even stopping saccharin and sucralose may be some benefit, the effect on the relapse might be quite uncertain. One thing people can do would be stopping taking saccharin and sucralose for a while to see how the gut reacts, then making further decision.

 

[kiny]

thanks Xiaofa