. It most often develops in young adults, people who smoke, and those with a close family member who has IBD.
Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, and weight loss. Treatments currently aim to prevent symptom flare-ups through diet modification, medication, and surgery.
Currently, researchers are digging into the concept of hygiene hypothesis and questioning its role in Crohn’s disease.
Cleaning Up the Hygiene Hypothesis
The hygiene hypothesis is a theory that suggests the lack of exposure to microbes early in life may lead to a lack of immune regulation toward environmental microbes.
In this new study, researchers used an environmental questionnaire to collect information from nearly 4,300 first-degree relatives of people with Crohn’s disease enrolled in the Crohn’s and Colitis Canada Genetic, Environmental, and Microbial (CCC-GEM) project.
Using responses to the questionnaire and historical data collected at the time of recruitment, researchers analyzed several environmental factors, including family size, the presence of dogs or cats as household pets, the number of bathrooms in the house, living on a farm, drinking unpasteurized milk and drinking well water. The analysis also included age at the time of exposure.
They found that exposure to dogs, particularly from ages 5 to 15, was linked with healthy gut permeability and balance between the microbes in the gut and the body’s immune response all of which might help protect against Crohn’s disease. Similar effects were observed across all age groups.
But they did not see the same results with cats and are still trying to determine why. It could also happen because dog owners get outside more often with their pets or live in areas with more green space, which is shown to protect against Crohn’s.
Another protective factor seemed to be living with three or more family members in the first year of life, which was associated with microbiome composition later in life.
The gut microbiome is believed to play a role in several health conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
These findings may assist physicians in asking detailed questions of patients to determine who is at the highest risk. However, the early life environmental factors were assessed by questionnaires, so caution is warranted in interpreting these results due to possible recall bias at recruitment.
The reasons dog ownership and larger families appear to protect Crohn’s remain unclear. We hope researchers would find the answers soon.
Source: Eurekalert
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