Probowler Matt Light explains that he has Crohn’s Disease

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Matt Light is retiring from professional football after 11 years in the NFL and playing in five Superbowls with the New England Patriots.  Matt has suffered from Crohn’s Disease symptoms since 2001.  Only five players have played in five Superbowls and Light is one of them.  Matt never told the public that he suffered from Crohn’s Disease, but instead chose to wait until he was done with football altogether.  Crohn’s Disease also was not the main reason Light ended his career.  Matt Light wanted to “go out on his own terms”, and that meant healthy, playing good ball, and getting to play for the Superbowl title a fifth time.  His main reasons for not revealing that he had Crohn’s Disease while playing is that he did not want to receive criticism that blamed any negative performances on his disease rather than him.

It is remarkable that he has played in the NFL at such a high level for so many years.  Congratulations to Matt on such a great career!

Crohn’s Disease, Type-2 Diabetes; is there a link?

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I found an interesting online article from the Wall Street Journal here.  The article goes into detail about a team of researchers in Boston that are analyzing the genetic makeup and relationships among various diseases and proteins in humans.  Diseases with symptoms appearing to be unrelated may in fact be intimately tied together in their genetic structure.  An example would be that while Crohn’s Disease and Type-2 Diabetes do not appear to have much in common, at the cellular level they in fact do share similarities in the genetic code of people who suffer from the diseases.

The research centers around mapping clusters of diseases, at the center of clusters may be diseases that share many common structures in genes and the proteins they produce that interact with cells causing diseases.  Colon Cancer shares at least one of 34 genes with 50 other diseases.  Colon Cancer would be at the center of a cluster surrounded by the 50 diseases it is related to.  Scientists may end up discovering that treatments or cures that occur in one disease may work on others.

There are also implications for patients with one sort of disease being at risk for developing other closely related diseases.  For example, a patient with Ischemic Heart disease is 60% more likely to develop Type-2 Diabetes than the average healthy person.   Also, what conclusions may be drawn about patients and their relatives.  My mother suffers from Type-2 diabetes while I suffer from Crohn’s Disease.  Was I more likely than not to have Crohn’s Disease given the fact my mother developed Type-2 Diabetes?

UCF researchers develop nanoparticle microbe testing

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Found a neat article hear discussing a new nanoparticle technology being developed by University of Central Florida researchers.  The technology will allow doctors to test for hard to find microbes that can lie dormant deep inside tissue of humans for years before reactivating themselves and causing harm to the human body.  A common example of this appears in tuberculosis cases.

The researchers tested their product against Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP), a pathogen that has been linked to the cause of Johne’s Disease in cattle which is similar to Crohn’s Disease in humans.  This is good stuff, it could lead to a new therapy, better testing for Crohn’s in humans, or even a cure to Crohn’s Disease in the future.

University of Central Florida appears to be very active in diseases of the intestine, note another article we covered before about UCF researchers developing a new blood test for Crohn’s which they patented and then sold to a pharmaceutical company.  I was pretty critical of the researchers doing that as it appears that the science is not about the money, only how much, sort of like in politics and just about anything else nowadays I suppose.

IBD patients at risk for high levels of radiation

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In sort of a duh…. moment for researchers and journal Clinical and Gastroenterology and Hepatology, doctors analyzed a bunch of data that basically shows IBD patients are at risk for elevated radiation exposure.  The main reason is that new x-ray tomography imaging allows for better views of the intestinal tract but due to frequency of use increases patient exposure to radiation when tests are frequently required such as in Crohn’s Disease patients.

Hey, I guess the good thing is that the journal is making it known that perhaps some better imaging techniques (less damaging) are needed, or doctors should possibly limit the number of times they expose a single patient to the tomography imaging process.  On the whole, the hypothesis and data to support it are about as obvious as standing outside in the rain will get you wet.  Maybe not being a doctor I am missing something but it does intuitively make sense that the more you use x-ray diagnostics, the more radiation a person is exposed to.

Crohn’s Disease drug maker Prometheus cannot patent a law of nature

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Found interesting coverage here and here about a Prometheus patent that was thrown out based on the ruling that the laws of nature cannot be patented.  The Supreme Court threw out medical patent claims by Prometheus Laboratories that sought to tailor drugs to Crohn’s Disease patients based on a blood test.  The blood test measures the rate that medicine breaks down upon metabolizing in individual patients.  This ruling is a pretty big deal in the circles of personalized medicine and directly relates to Crohn’s Disease.  Prometheus sued the Mayo Clinic for patent infringement after the Mayo Clinic developed their own version of the blood test.  My take on the decision is that the lower cost of health care for patients based on the existence of multiple tests is a good thing.

An example of poor journalism regarding Crohn’s Disease

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I found an example here highlighting many people’s misconceptions about inflammatory bowel disease.  The interesting thing was that the comments from readers of the blog post were far more accurate and informed than the people writing the blog post (on the internet, this is a very rare thing).  If you read the disclosure at the end of the article you will see that the authors have written multiple books about how to “cure” Crohn’s Disease and other illnesses.

The article states that the root cause of Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, and other digestive ailments are chemicals in our food supply and that the only way to solve all our problems is to eat organic foods.  I really cannot stand articles and books like these because they simply provide people with false information which only goes towards hindering the fight against these diseases, but I suppose it does help the authors sell more books and make more money.

I do agree with a couple of points the authors make in the article.  One, I agree that we should all eat organic foods, but the only way that is going to happen is if we eradicate many of the people overpopulating the earth…. not going to happen.  We need all the chemicals that go into our foods in order to meet the unsustainable demands we make on our food supply.  Soilent Green here we come.  Yummy!  Second, I agree with the authors that big pharma companies are more concerned with padding the bottom line than they are curing disease.  Not sure how to fix this without CEOs and shareholders experiencing a sudden outbreak of morals and common sense (maybe we could all get rich by writing books about riding the earth of disease through healthy eating).

Being one who suffers from Crohn’s Disease it can be really frustrating to have a friend, relative, or co-worker hand you a book about curing Crohn’s Disease and say, “Here, you have to read this it will completely change your life and make you better!”  Seriously?  How?  Because so-and-so printed it in a book it is true?  Oh sure, it must be.  Come on folks, I know you just want to help, but think about what you are saying…  A cure manages to elude all the world’s scientists and doctors, while the secret key to defeating inflammatory bowel disease has been published in a New York Times best seller, and no one seems to notice but the organic-health-nut-born-intestinaly-healthy-in-the-first-place crowd?  Yeah right.

Crohn’s and NSAID use

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Found an interesting article here that investigates the correlation or lack thereof between acetaminophen, aspirin, and other NSAIDs.  The research shows a link between NSAID use, excluding aspirin, and Crohn’s Disease.  No correlation was found between Crohn’s Disease and aspirin and no link was found between Crohn’s Disease and acetaminophen use leading up to diagnosis.

Doctors are dumbfounded as to how there could be a link between Crohn’s and NSAIDS and there not be a link between Crohn’s Disease and aspirin which, itself, is a NSAID.  It should be noted that this does not exactly show that aspirin is alright to take by those suffering from Crohn’s Disease.  Aspirin may still irritate the lining of the gastrointestinal tract leading to flares.

MAP and Crohn’s Disease

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I found this interesting article that discusses the relationship between Crohn’s Disease and MAP – Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis.  MAP is related to a microbe that causes tuberculosis, and MAP causes Johne’s Disease in cattle.  When cattle develop Johne’s Disease, they become very ill and more or less waste away like patients with severe Crohn’s Disease.  Speculation about Crohn’s Disease being caused by MAP is not a new idea.

In 2003, William Davis professor at Washington State University, published a paper for the National Academy of Sciences about the staggering rates of infection among cattle over the past 100 years.  When Davis became aware of a similar rise in the number of humans carrying MAP, he could not ignore the link.  This has been a controversial idea among scientists but in 2006 the US Department of Agriculture issued a fact sheet recognizing researchers’ concerns that MAP was being transmitted to humans through undercooked meats, unpasteurized milk, and contaminated water.

In 2008, the American Academy of Microbiology, published a report that listed patients with Crohn’s Disease as being 7 times more likely to have MAP in their gut flora than people without Crohn’s Disease.  It is known that people are susceptible to contracting MAP, but that does not necessarily mean that it will cause a person to develop Crohn’s Disease.  Many scientists believe that such data warrants more studies while others remain skeptical that MAP could be responsible for causing Crohn’s Disease in humans.  This is similar to what occurred in the past where spicy foods and stress were blamed for ulcers until it was finally discovered that the bacteria H. pylori causes ulcers in humans.

William Davis is continuing with his third decade of MAP research in cattle and hopes to develop a safe and effective vaccine that will reduce MAP infection in cattle and consequently in humans.  It is his goal to rid cattle of MAP and if successful, rid humans of Crohn’s Disease.

Encouraging Integrated Health Systems

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Effective as of January 2012, The Affordable Care Act, provides incentives for physicians to join together to form “Accountable Care Organizations. (ACOs)” In these groups, doctors can better coordinate patient care and improve the quality, help prevent disease and illness, and reduce unnecessary hospital admissions. If Accountable Care Organizations provide high quality care and reduce costs to the health care system, they can keep some of the money that they have helped save.  How can ACOs work to reduce costs?

ACOs create incentives for health care providers to work together to treat an individual patient across care settings – including doctor’s offices, hospitals, and long-term care facilities.  The Medicare Shared Savings Program will reward ACOs that lower growth in health care costs while meeting performance standards on quality of care and putting patients first.  Patient and provider participation in an ACO is purely voluntary.

Today, more than half of Medicare beneficiaries have five or more chronic conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, and kidney disease. These patients often receive care from multiple physicians. A failure to coordinate care can often lead to patients not getting the care they need, receiving duplicative care, and being at an increased risk of suffering medical errors.  On average, each year, one in seven Medicare patients admitted to a hospital has been subject to a harmful medical mistake in the course of their care.  And nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from the hospital is readmitted within 30 days – a readmission many patients could have avoided if their care outside of the hospital had been aggressive and better coordinated.

Improving coordination and communication among physicians and other providers and suppliers through Accountable Care Organizations will help improve the care Medicare beneficiaries receive, while also helping lower costs.

According to the analysis of the proposed regulation for ACOs, Medicare could potentially save as much as $960 million over three years.

How can ACOs provide better care for Patients?

Any patient who has multiple doctors (Crohn’s Disease patients) probably understands the frustration of fragmented and disconnected care: lost or unavailable medical charts, duplicated medical procedures, or having to share the same information over and over with different doctors.  Accountable Care Organizations are designed to lift this burden from patients, while improving the partnership between patients and doctors in making health care decisions.  People with Medicare will have better control over their health care, and their doctors can provide better care because they will have better information about their patients’ medical history and can communicate with a patient’s other doctors.  Medicare beneficiaries whose doctors participate in an ACO will still have a full choice of providers and can still choose to see doctors outside of the ACO. Patients choosing to receive care from providers participating in ACOs will have access to information about how well their doctors, hospitals, or other caregivers are meeting quality standards.

Any patient who is familiar with the level of care provided at a Mayo Clinic knows that teams of doctors and other caregivers work as a team to resolve medical problems that are put before them.  The teams freely communicate with each other often in person or over the phone to develop plans for treating a patient’s ailment.  The team based approach allows for better care and often results in more efficient and more timely diagnosis and treatment for patients.

Proven Techniques and Novel Research Help Control Crohn’s Disease

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The following is a guest post written by Brian Flora on behalf of IU Health

Introduction
 Crohn’s disease, which is one of the irritable bowel diseases, occurs when you have chronic inflammation in your gastrointestinal tract. If you have Crohn’s disease or you are close to someone who does, you probably know that the condition can lead to some embarrassing situations. However, careful management allows most people with Crohn’s disease to lead full and active lives. Whether Crohn’s disease is new to you or not, you can continue to test old and new treatment strategies to put the condition in remission.

The Basics of Crohn’s Disease

Crohn’s disease is an autoimmune disorder, which means that your immune system reacts against cells in your own body. This leads to chronic inflammation, especially in the large intestine, or colon, and small intestine. Similar to Type I diabetes, which is another autoimmune disease, you are most likely to develop Crohn’s disease when you are under 30 years old. Young children can also have Crohn’s disease. Individuals with a family history are at highest risk.

Symptoms of Crohn’s disease vary, but most often include diarrhea, stomachaches, vomiting, pain in the joints and fatigue from lack of nutrient absorption. Flare-ups involving bloody diarrhea and long-lasting fever require urgent medical attention. Endoscopy, MRI and ultrasound imaging, blood tests and stool samples can confirm the disease in children or adults. Once you have the diagnosis, you can begin treatment to put the disease into remission and prevent complications, such as ulcers, fistulas, colon cancer and bowel obstruction.

Medicinal and Nutritional Treatment

Crohn’s disease is chronic condition with no known cure, but treatment helps relieve symptoms and reduce inflammation to make episodes less severe. Anti-inflammatory medications include amino-salicylates, or 5-ASAs, and corticosteroids. Each individual has a different response to treatment, and surgery to remove part of the intestine can help children who do not respond to these medications, according to IUHealth Riley.

Nutritional therapy for Crohn’s disease helps prevent symptoms of malnutrition resulting from malabsorption. You will need to experiment to see which foods are best for you, since people have different responses. You may have lactose intolerance and need to limit your intake of dairy products, and chances are good that you can benefit from limiting saturated fat, which is in butter, cream and high-fat meats. Many people find that cabbage, broccoli and raw fruits and vegetables make symptoms worse, but you may be able to get your fiber from cooked fruits and vegetables instead. Children who eat more fruits and vegetables have a lower risk for developing Crohn’s disease.

Dietary supplements can counter the effects of malabsorption and keep you healthy. Vitamin B-12 injections can prevent anemia and growth stunting in children. Calcium and vitamin D supplements support strong bones. Children can take advantage of intravenous feeding to get more calories and protein and support normal growth. Emerging research suggests that omega-three fatty acids, which are in fatty fish and cod liver oil, may reduce inflammation. Supplements of probiotics, or healthy bacteria, can help fight diarrhea. Specialists in digestive diseases can help you develop an appropriate diet and supplement plan to stay healthy.

Support

Support is a critical, often overlooked, component of managing Crohn’s disease. Support groups are encouraging settings to make friends and exchange information. Because they are highly aware of their special treatment and differences from their classmates, children with Crohn’s disease have an especially great need for interacting with their peers with the same condition. Associations such as the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America have local chapters to organize meetings.

Support groups reduce stress and make daily life easier for caregivers. These meetings give caregivers the chance to leave the home and talk to people in their situations. Activities completely unrelated to caregiving, such as group exercise classes at a local gym, are great stress relievers, too.

Conclusion

Crohn’s disease may not have a cure, but you can certainly do your part to control it. If you have Crohn’s disease, or you are helping to care for someone who does, remember that your extra effort can keep flare-ups milder and less frequent. Explore the dietary and lifestyle changes to find the ones that are best for your individual situation, and keep watching the news for the latest research on understanding and treating Crohn’s disease.