Protector gene for bowel disease

[Peggy]

An interesting article in the paper...

Canada-U.S. team finds protector gene for bowel disease
Friday, October 27, 2006
REPORT: Mutation protects some lucky individuals from the ailment
by: Margaret Munro
CANWEST NEWS SERVICE

A Canada-U.S. team has discovered a gene mutation that protects some lucky individuals from inflammatory bowel disease, which affects close to a million North Americans.
The protective gene was the last thing the researchers expected to find as they combed through the DNA of several thousand Americans and Canadians searching for genetic clues to the baffling disease.
"It took us a bit by surprise," says Dr. Richard Duerr of the University of Pittsburgh, lead author of a report on the gene findings released by the journal Science yesterday.
Co-author Dr. Anne Griffiths of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children says the protective gene may protect against not just inflammatory bowel disease, but arthritis.
Griffith's team collected samples from hundreds of Toronto-area families that participated in the study. Montreal patients and their doctors, led by Dr. Alain Bitton at Royal Victoria Hospital, were also participants in the study. DNA extracted from participants' blood cells was put through scanners that turned up several gene mutations, or variants, associated with IBD, which includes Chron's disease and colitis. The disorders cause the intestinal tissue to become inflamed, form sores, and bleed easily.
The Chrohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada says IBD appears to be more common in North America and northern Europe than elsewhere. It says Canada, which has about 170,000 men and women with IBD, is believed to have one of the highest rates of IBD.
Previous genetic studies found a link between Crohn's disease and mutations in a gene known as CARD15, but the researchers knew there had to be more.
To find them, they compared the genes of almost 3,000 people with Crohn's disease and IBD and 1,000 people free of the disease to see which genes set those apart. The gene scans detected two variants in one gene already associated with IBD. They also found variants in a gene that produces a protein that's part of a cellular receptor for interleukin-23 (IL-23), a protein involved in inflammatory processes.
When the researchers looked at the IL-23 gene, they found several variants associated with increased risk of IBD and one that confers what the scientists describe as "very strong protection" against IBD.

[tex]

Those lucky devils, (the ones with the protective gene, that is).

Tex

[artteacher]

I have only one thing to say: "Dang mutants!"
Love, Marsha

[thedell19]

Yes well in a way this is a good thing. Now they know what can protect people from it. Now they can maybe try and find a med that produces the protien or something...

It very well may get interesting in the next year or so with IBD.