A missing bacterium?

According to the BBC French researchers suspect that a low level of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii bacteria in the intestine could be the cause of Crohn's disease.

The researchers, from the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, had already shown that patients with Crohn's disease have a marked deficiency in bacteria from the Clostridium leptum group.

Their latest work shows that F. prausnitzii - a major component of this group - accounts for a large part of the deficit.

If this is true, then treatment would be a simple course of specific probiotics to boost the levels of the bacteria. However, this research is only at the level of cells in test tube. It still has the difficult hurdles of animal and human trials to come.

It's interesting to note that probiotics and antibiotics are both being proposed as possible cures for Crohn's. Although this sounds contradictory, they could both be successful. The probiotic may encourage the growth of certain "good" bacteria which work against "bad" bacteria, whereas the antibiotic works solely on eliminating the "bad" bacteria.