Duodenal villous atrophy, Yersinia and Collagenous Colitis

[mle_ii]

Hmm... found some interesting information hidden in a study. Though it is pretty old now. While the gluten/celiac aspect is not news to me the relationship to Yersinia is news to me as well as the part I bolded from the study.

Digestive Diseases and Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 6 (June 1998), pp. 1341± 1346
Collagenous Colitis and Yersinia enterocolitica Infection

Duodenal villous atrophy was found in four patients
with collagenous colitis, and in two it was resistant
to a glute n-fre e die t. Duodenal villous atrophy is
a relative ly common finding in patients with collage -
nous colitis (27± 30) , affecting up to 40% of case s (28) ,
but it usually responds to a glute n-free die t (28, 29) .In some cases die tary restrictions have also been
found to result in normalization of the colonic histology
(28) . Thus it would seem that collagenous colitis
is in many cases either a manife station of glute n
sensitivity or is associated with refractory sprue . The
diffe rential diagnosis of collage nous colitis clearly involve
s a need to rule out celiac dise ase .

[tex]

They didn't indicate that they actually tried any diet restrictions other than gluten, for the purposes of the test, so I would guess that the refractory cases remained resistant because of other food intolerances, (thus suggesting that other food intolerances can cause, or at least prolong, villous atrophy.

That's an interesting article. I've long suspected that many of us have villous atrophy, but I don't recall seeing any research that actually confirmed that. Maybe research on that issue has been cited before, and I "slept" through it. LOL.

Tex