<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> I mentioned in my "Bacteria, Breast-feeding, and CD" post how it might be possible that antibiotics could trigger celiac disease by disrupting the intestinal microflora. Now a study shows that this may be in fact true for Crohn's disease. This further supports the need to investigate commensal bacteria in celiac disease research. Here's another thought I will leave you with on microflora and celiac disease. CD has been shown to be at least partially dependent on genetics with more frequent occurance among immediate family members where at least one has CD. But CD may occur in one identical twin and not the other. Besides genes, intestinal microflora are also passed between mother and child. A "family-line" of such flora may be established. These microflora may tend to protect a family from CD, increase the risk of CD, or have no effect on CD at all. The environment also determines the mix of microflora. Identical twins may carry the same genes and may share the same microflora from their mother at birth, but the environment ultimately colors the flora that colonizes the gut of each separate twin. Microflora, and not genetics, may be why one twin gets CD and the other does not. Microflora passed between members of an ethnic culture may also determine whether CD is common or uncommon in that culture. Something to think about... ---------- Antibiotic use a risk factor for Crohn's disease http://www.amh.org/HealthNews/Reuters/20040205elin018.htm ---------- Gut. 2004 Feb;53(2):246-50 Antibiotic use and the development of Crohn's disease. Card T, Logan RF, Rodrigues LC, Wheeler JG. Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, Queen's Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK. [log in to unmask] BACKGROUND: Few environmental determinants of Crohn's disease are well established. Some observational data exist to implicate antibiotic use as a risk factor but these are derived from studies using questionnaires to assess reported antibiotic use that were susceptible to recall bias. We have therefore explored this relationship in prospectively gathered data. METHODS: We selected incident cases of Crohn's disease from the General Practice Research Database with at least five years of data prior to diagnosis. Controls with five years of complete data were randomly selected. Data were extracted on smoking, drug prescriptions, age, sex, and a variety of symptoms and diagnoses that might be indicative of occult Crohn's disease. Logistic regression was used to investigate the relationship between antibiotic use and Crohn's disease. RESULTS: A total of 587 Crohn's disease cases and 1460 controls were available for analysis. We found that antibiotic use 2-5 years pre-diagnosis occurred in 71% of cases compared with 58% of controls (p<0.001), and the median number of courses was two in the cases and one in the controls (p<0.001). Adjusting for age, sex, smoking, and use of other drugs, antibiotic use had an odds ratio of 1.32 (1.05-1.65). We were unable to show specificity to any subgroup of antibacterials. Associations similar to that with antibiotics were also found with oral contraceptive, cardiovascular, and neurological drugs. CONCLUSIONS: We found a statistically significant association between Crohn's disease and prior antibiotic use. This cannot be explained by recall bias, but due to lack of specificity it is unclear whether it is causal. PMID: 14724158 [PubMed - in process] * * * *Support summarization of posts, reply to the SENDER not the CELIAC List*