More Crohn's genes found

There hasn't been much Crohn's news for the past few months, but I expect it to pick up around conference time. In the meantime The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has released information about a new technique for finding genes associated with a given disease. The researchers have tested this in the area of Crohn's and already found new genes related to the disease.

In a complex disorder such as Crohn's disease, many different genes interact to cause the illness. Research over the past few years have identified many of the genes with the strongest effects, but many other genes with important roles may produce weaker or ambiguous signals in the large-scale studies, and go overlooked.

For children and adults with Crohn's disease, who suffer the debilitating effects of chronic gastrointestinal inflammation, the emerging gene data may open the doors to more effective treatments. "Blocking cell receptors at some points on a biological pathway may produce clinical improvements, but with side effects to the immune system," said Baldassano. "If we can block other molecules further downstream on a pathway, we may achieve better treatments that may be more specific to an individual patient, with fewer side effects."

The full research is available in The American Society of Human Genetics (pay to view).