Another Clue That IBDs May Be Caused By A Mycobacterium

[harvest_table]

Interesting discussion.

Here's an article (mice trial) on "Influence of MAP on colitis development and specific immune responses during disease" It's in pdf format and I'm not sure the link will work. If not, just google whats in " " above.

The final sentence caught my attention- "The results further suggest that MAP is functioning in an immunologic rather than infectious capacity, and that it may not be essential for the MAP to be alive to exert their immunopathogenic potential on susceptible hosts.

http://iai.asm.org/cgi/reprint/IAI.01770-06v1.pdf

Connie, it is a small world ...do you have family here and ever get back to visit? PM me about that if you would like.

Sorry to hear you have had such a rough time. I understand your comments about doc's prescribing steroids for MC and I agree, they do just mask the problems. In my case however, right after my DX they gave me some much needed relief and a window of opportunity to assess other options and wean into diet to control symptoms.

Love from Fergus,

Joanna

[Stanz]

Joanna,

I DO have family there and I sent you a HUGE PM the other day after seeing you were from FF and it contained lots of family names, etc, and you obviously didn't get it, clearly it is a small world and my family there has been there forever, the odds of us not having a connection are virtually nil. Maybe I don't have enough posts to send PM's? I don't know. I didn't copy my message, so if you didn't get it I will try to re-construct. In that msg.I said I was born in FF, actually I was born in Duluth, but my sisters all skied to school in FF, at least that is the family legend, LOL. I am about to start 7 days straight of catering and have 0 time to be online when I'm working, so if I don't respond right away, please know that I am dying to "talk" to you.

This whole MAP thing is fascinating, as I've recently been sent scans of medical info from my sister that dates back to my Grandfather in 1918, and are letters from the Mayo Clinic, and who obviously had the same issues, and was Dx with tuberculosis and GI problems prior to that and I wish I could copy them and post them here, as it is fascinating stuff. Some of it is typewritten, but the main letter that is so "enlightening" is handwritten. I'm the baby in the family so maybe the legends are homogenized, but what I remember is that this grandfather was sent to a clinic in Colorado and then released and sent home to die. But the letters show that he was released after having been tested negative for having had TB, and he lived in a metal shack where people brought him food and were afraid to touch him or have any contact with him until he died. They burned the shack after he died, he had a trunk in the shack with all his "stuff", this "stuff" came to Portland with his son - my father - we were not allowed to open this trunk, it sat in the garage as a point of fear for my entire childhood. I have no idea where it ended up.

The very thought that he could have been misdiagnosed all this time is just too much to bear. We lived on a dairy farm, milk wasn't pasteurized, so if he had the genetics that made him a perfect host for MAC, which so closely resembles the TB bacterium? Well, it just is such an interesting path to follow on my journey and that of the lives of SO MANY of my siblings and the grandchildren and great grandchildren in this family, many who have Crohn's, IBD, who have had intestinal resections, who have died of colon cancer. It is likely that the inherited genes from both sides of a family, whose heritage dates back to the mid 15th century as being Swedish, is the cause to the source. I am writing a chronological diary and am asking my siblings to do the same, as it seems obvious that this "path" we've all been on was pre-ordained by genetics. It was LIFE that took it where it did. I don't have time now to go into this in more detail but I am so appreciative for the information that Tex wrote about this subject, as I believe that what has been discussed on this thread is a real key to the progression of this illness for all of us.

In a nutshell - we were cursed by genes, we fought it off until we couldn't anymore, and then the bacteria found a home in our already damaged gut and we either treated it with antibiotics and ended up with MC, or we still have the bacteria living in our gut and have Crohn's. And maybe I am oversimplifying because I need an answer to a lifetime of questions, I don't know!!!

Would love to talk to you Joanna and I believe a Happy Birthday is in order as well, so I hope you had a good day and are well. Please PM me.

[harvest_table]

Connie,

Sorry, I did not get your PM. I haven't been very active on the board for awhile so not up on the new bells and whistles but I should be notified if I had new messages. Yours did not come though.

I will PM you and if you don't receive it let me know. I'm anxious to talk with you also.

Thanks for the birthday wishes and good luck with your catering...

Love,
Joanna

[Stanz]

Joanna,

Have no idea how PM's work here, but have been a part of forums like this before and haven't had this problem. I have likely done some editing to my above post since you wrote back. My family is from Pelican Rapids. I have tons of family there. I will look for your PM.

Connie

[harvest_table]

Connie,

I sent you a PM, if you don't receive it, let me know.

Joanna

[tex]

Connie,

There are three buttons below the PM message box. They are labeled "Save as draft", "Preview", and "Submit". The "Submit" button is the correct one to click on, of course, for posting the PM. If you clicked on the "Preview" button, (which shows you what your post will look like after posting), and then you failed to go back and submit the PM, before navigating on to another page or post, the message was lost. If you clicked on the "Save as draft" button, though, then your message was saved, (for future editing). To see if that's what happened, go to the index page, (the main page, where all the forum are listed), and click on one of the links with the following wording, (the links are located just above the list of forums, on the index page):

View your drafts and topics you have posted to
View your drafts and posts

The system will show you a list of all your saved drafts, first, followed by a list of posts or topics, depending on which link you click on. If your PM is there, (in the list of drafts), then just click on it, to select it, and then you can edit it, and submit it, or save it as a draft, once again, if you don't have time to finish it.

The reason I added that "Save as draft" option, was to provide a way for anyone who was writing a long post, and didn't have time to finish, due to an interruption, or whatever, to save their work, so that they didn't have to start over, when they came back, later.

Incidentally, I just checked on my drafts, and found two, that I was unaware of. Apparently, I hit the wrong key, when trying to post them. That happens fairly often, so anytime a post or PM is missing, it pays to check your drafts.

Also, occasionally, e-mails carrying notifications about PMs, get caught in spam filters, or the notifications are otherwise overlooked, and a PM can be totally missed, even though it is actually in someone's in-box. Once you log out, the system will automatically cancel the "New message" flag, on all unread posts and PMs. It pays to check your PMs once in a while, because if you miss the first notification, the system will not notify you again. For example, I still have two PMs in my outbox, from a year or two ago, because the recipients never opened them.

Tex

[Stanz]

Thank you, Tex, for your never ending attempts to educate. I checked my messages and found a few I exchanged w/you, many weeks ago, so it was working and have no idea what happened to the one I sent Joanna, but we have since exchanged pm's so all is good.

[tex]

Connie,

Did you check your "Outbox"? If it's still there, you can still edit it, and use it. If it's there, though, and it's not in her mailbox, that's a sign that some kind of glitch happened in the database, and the system didn't properly queue that post for her account ID. If that happened, I would sure like to know about it, to see if I can figure out what might have gone wrong with the code, and possibly prevent it from happening again.

IOW, if that PM is still in your "Outbox", please let me know. Otherwise, I suppose it was just one of those things that sometimes happen in the weird world of computers, that we will never know the reason for. If everything is working properly now, then it was probably just one of those random cyber mysteries, that show up now and then, just to keep us from thinking that we have everything figured out.

Tex

[Stanz]

Not in outbox either. I probably hit preview and then exited. Wouldn't be the first time. Thanks.

[lehrski]

A number of years ago I was growing fairly large amounts of a Mycobacterium species in the lab. We had a little accident where several culture flasks smashed and I was exposed to the organism. We decontaminated ourselves and the lab and no one became infected.

Likely just a coincidence but collagenous colitis started for me around that time. There were a lot of other potential factors though at that time - high stress, eating lots of bread and otherwise poor diet. The usual life a graduate student.

[tex]

Hi,

Welcome to our internet family. I see that you have been a member for over 2 years, but this is your first post. It's good to see you posting.

That's a very interesting scenario that you described. Do you know which species you were exposed to? IOW, were any of these a MAP variety, or were they all other species?

How can you be sure that no one became infected, since they can be rather difficult to detect, in some situations, and they are claimed to propagate slowly, in the body. Has their favorite "hideout" in the human body even been discovered?

Chances are, as you say, it probably was just a coincidence that your CC presented at that time, but it's certainly an interesting coincidence, isn't it.

Thanks for sharing this information, and again, welcome aboard.

Tex (Wayne)

[ant]

Dear Lehrski

Also a big

All best, Ant

[Polly]

What an interesting thread! Tex, thanks for flagging it to me.

I read through but certainly haven't digested all of that good info and theorizing.

Here are a few thoughts I had while reading it. I think I know the reason why the MAP shows up under the microscope in the case of animal disease (Johne's) but not usually human disease. The test used to find MAP stains the cell wall of the bacterium red. In humans, the MAP has deveolped the ability to transform itself by eliminating its cell wall - it becomes something called a spheroplast. Thus there is no cell wall to take up stain and be visible. Since we can't really see the MAP in human bodies, I guess they could be anywhere - maybe in those lymphocytes in the intestinal epithelia, as you propose, Tex, or in intestinal lymph nodes (which would be located outside the gut - possibly in the mesentery?).

This also explains why antibiotics have not worked in the past. Many of those originally used worked by disrupting the cell wall, and in spheroplast form with no cell wall, they had no effect on the MAP. The newer drugs like clarithromycin don't need a cell wall in order to kill the bacterium.

Culturing for MAP in human intestinal cells is another way to find out if the bug is present. IOW, we can try to grow it on a culture plate. It is a very difficult bug to grow and even if successful, it may take 6 years!

Another word about antibiotics.........when scientists studied the mycobacteria most like the avium type, it took 3-4 years and 5-6 different antibiotics to render it ineffective. The mycobacterium causing leprosy might need an entire lifetime of drugs aimed at it. This is similar to the "prototype" mycobacterium, tuberculosis (TB), which can take months to years and multiple drugs to cure. BTW, did you know that antibiotics are effective against TB as long as it is limited to the lung, but once the bug spreads, are usually ineffective against intestinal TB?

I do think that that mycobacteria cause disease primarily because of the immunologic response that they elicit. IOW, it is not the bacteria itself that is so destructive, it's body's immune response to that bacteria that causes problems. I guess this is where genes come in.....those of us with a genetic predisposition to a heightened immune response are most at risk. And perhaps the MAP turns the "switch" on a gene to set things in motion.

Anyway, fascinating discussion. Tex and I and others have long believed there may be an infectious cause for MC.

Love,

Polly

[tex]

Polly,

Thank you so much for your insight. That information really helps to illuminate the situation with MAP. I recall reading about the fact that in human tissue they are able to live without conventional cell walls, (so would that be evolution or devolution?), but the implications that holds for antibiotics, never registered on my thinking.

No, I certainly wasn't aware that antibiotic effectiveness against TB was limited to the lungs. Hmmmmmmm.

I think it's really great that we can share our thoughts on issues such as this, and add so much to our understanding, every time we do so. Thanks.

Love,
Tex

[cludwig]

I am out of my league here, but I'll take a stab. I found an article on prevention of postsurgery-induced adhesions and they stated that if the antibiotic cefoxitin sodium were put into adhesion barriors that the incidence of adhesions dramatically dropped. They didn't know why but guessed that some form of infection was the cause of the adhesion formation. Is cefoxin sodium similar to clarithromycin in that it can kill bacteria without walls?

Love,
Cristi