Crohn's disease: is the cause in epigenetics?
Scientists have managed to get closer to the mystery of Crohn's disease
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh seem to have managed to get closer to understanding the mechanism of development of Crohn's disease. This research could be an important step towards creating treatments for this disease.
Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, which can affect all its departments, starting from the oral cavity and ending with the rectum.
Currently, there are no methods of treating this disease, and therapy is mainly aimed at eliminating the symptoms of the disease.
As scientists explain, it is known that several genes are associated with the development of Crohn's disease. However, it remained a mystery why not all people inheriting "bad" variants of these genes develop the disease.
According to the authors of the current work, the disease is associated with epigenetic disorders of some parts of these genes, which are caused by exposure to environmental factors or even a certain diet.
In this case, we are talking about a chemical modification of DNA that does not affect its structure – methylation (addition of methyl groups -CH 3).
As scientists say, the genes that are affected by these changes may be a good target for targeted therapy of this disease.
"Our study shows that the development of Crohn's disease is associated with epigenetic changes. We hope that this knowledge will help in creating a therapy for the treatment of this disease," says the study's lead author Professor Jack Satsangi from the Center for Genetic and Experimental Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.
As scientists add, such a DNA test cannot serve to diagnose this disease, but it can help identify those people who are at risk. Also, such a test will help to better monitor the development of the disease or observe how the patient reacts to treatment.
An article by Scottish scientists on the genetic mechanisms of Crohn's disease development was published in the latest issue of the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (Adams et al., Two-stage Genome-wide Methylation Profiling in Childhood-onset Crohn's Disease Implies Epigenetic Alterations at the VMP1/MIR21 and HLA Loci).
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