Potential Links Between Fungi and Crohn’s Disease:
• Crohn's disease: bacteria, genetic, diet – plays a major role.
• Patients with Crohn's have abnormal immune responses to these bacteria.
• While most researchers focus their investigations on these bacteria, few have examined the role of fungi, which are also present in everyone's intestines.
• New study adds significant new information to understanding why some people develop Crohn's disease.
• Fungi are eukaryotes: organism whose cells contain a nucleus; they are closer to humans than bacteria, which are prokaryotes: single-celled forms of life with no nucleus.
• Collectively, the fungal community that inhabits the human body is known as the mycobiome, while the bacteria are called the bacteriome.
• The researchers found strong fungal-bacterial interactions in those with Crohn's disease: two bacteria (Escherichia coli and Serratia marcescens) and one fungus (Candida tropicalis) moved in lock step.
• Among hundreds of bacterial and fungal species inhabiting the intestines, it is telling that the three this study identified were so highly correlated in Crohn's patients.
