Crohns

2009-08-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

2009-08-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

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My Dad was in the armed services until he was about 30 years old. After serving fifteen years in the Air Force our family eventually moved to the Midwest. He was often very sick but the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him

In the early 1970's they did a lot of exploratory surgery's but I don't think the doctors didn't seem to know why he was sick. He would return from the hospital under a lot of medication and continued to work very hard.

Eventually my dad found a doctor that thought he might have Crohns Disease. The doctor removed most of his intestines (ileostomy) It was a very rare type of operation at the time, I believe and his life expectancy was very low . They di'dnt expect him to live more than five more years but he lived thirty more.

Crohn's disease is an autoimmune disease, in which the body's immune system attacks the gastrointestinal tract, There seems to be a genetic link to Crohn's disease, putting direct relatives and descendants at higher risk. People that smoke are 3 times more likely to develop Crohn's disease.

Crohn's disease affects around 500,000 people in North America. Crohn's disease sometimes appears in the teens and twenties, and also in the fifties to seventies, but can occur at any age.

There is no known cure for Crohn's disease.

Burrill Bernard Crohn, for whom the disease was named. Crohn, along with two colleagues, described patients with inflammation of the terminal ileum, the area most commonly affected by the illness.

Crohn's disease is one of two idiopathic inflammatory boweldiseases that affect approximately 1 million people in NorthAmerica. Despite important advances in diagnosis and treatmentin recent years, the underlying cause of the disease remainsunclear. As a result, the available therapies are not curativeand may pose a substantial risk of side effects.

A current theoryregarding the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease suggests thatthere is an overly aggressive immune response against commensalbacteria in a genetically predisposed person. In this context,the activation of lymphocytes and the overexpression of inflammatorycytokines represent a common effector mechanism leading ...

Some Information of different types of Cancer

NEJM -- Cytokine-Based Therapies for Crohn\'s Disease -- New Paradigms
Perspective from The New England Journal of Medicine -- Cytokine-Based Therapies for Crohn's Disease -- New Paradigms

http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/treatment

http://www.crohnsonline.com/Default.aspx?s_mcid=google-cd-unbranded

My dads battle with cancer

Crohns