A Crohn's disease is a inflammatory bowel disease
that about 700,000 people in the US have and follow them in their life time.
The disease is mainly affecting any tissues running from the mouth to anus
making them inflamed. During these times the inflamed tissue would not be able
to function normally. Many cases have patients come with with just the disease
affecting the small intestine and the beginning of the colon. The
symptoms that comes with this disease are stomach pain, diarrhea and rectal
bleeding, etc. The best way to know if you have this disease is to have a
colonoscopy performed.
The causes of Crohn is
that the immune system starts attacking the bacteria that are already
in our bodies that help us digest food. Mainly is this a genetic disorder that
runs in families and the symptoms will start to happen as lowest as
the age of 13 years old. The people who have this disease can watch their diets
and life habits to manage their symptoms from getting worse like spicy food and
drinking could trigger the symptoms of the disease to worsen.
Sadly for those people
who have this disease there is no cure as of right now. There are
treatments for Corhn's disease, which is to take medication to reduce the
symptoms and sometimes the medication doesn't help the patient, so surgery is
performed to remove the diseased section of the intestine. About 70 %
of the people who have the Crohn's disease will undergo surgery some point in
their life because of the symptoms worsening and medication couldn't help at
all.
I thought the article was
pretty helpful on understanding the basics of the Crohn's disease. For the
general public this would be a good article to get a broad description of what
Crohn's disease is and what are the causes of the disease along with testings
to identify if one has such disease or not. If I was an average
person reading this it would give me insights of this disease and what my
choices could be for treatment if I happen to have such disease, so I would not
be going into the doctors blind.
Zanni, Guido R. "Crohn's Disease:
Symptoms and Treatment." US News. U.S.News & World Report,
03 Aug. 2013. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.
I too agree that this article is a great way for people to gain knowledge and have an understanding of what Crohn’s disease is. It is incredibly disappointing to hear that there is no cure for this disease yet. I always find it interesting how our bodies can sometimes have an immunological response for harmful stuff. As you mentioned, the causes of Crohn’s disease is when our immune system attacks harmful bacteria within our bodies, which the intestines are full of. However, I still do not understand what triggers our immune system to attack the harmful bacteria in the first place. Within the article, it mentions that genetics play a role, but what about those patients that do not have a history of Crohn’s disease?
ReplyDeleteThe main causes for Crohn's disease is still unknown. As they mention genetics plays a role in the disease, its only one of the possibilities of getting the disease which mostly occur in the white and Jewish ethnic groups. The other possibilities which isn't from genetics are from environmental factors like smoking cigarettes which would be discussed next discussion in class. Another possibility is the immune system is malfunctioning. By this I mean, that even though there are bacteria in our body our immune system that we don't respond to like the ones that help us digest, when other types of bacteria enter the same area, but are considered invaders the immune system will respond. While all this is happening, the bacteria that are the helpful ones are also attacked by mistake which causes the Crohn’s disease and the attack doesn't stop.
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