cal companies that have been working behind the scenes in preparation for the day this theory comes to light. "You'll be amazed at how quickly the pharmaceutical companies will be out with a product to address it. They're calling this another Helicobacter," he says, referring to the oft-cited ulcer analogy. Pharmaceutical companies were caught off guard when the Helicobacter theory proved true, and are making sure that doesn't happen again, says Chiodini. He says he has talked with a number of pharmaceutical companies about what they should be doing to prepare for the possibility that Mp causes Crohn's.
And the evidence continues to mount. On June 1, two teams of researchers -- from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the University of Central Florida in Orlando -- announced at an annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Chicago that they had isolated Mp from the tissue of Crohn's patients, but not from control specimens.
"We are not making any claims that all patients with Crohn's have paratuberculosis, because it is my belief that this is a disease of multiple causes," says Dr. Ira Shafran from University of Central Florida, a gastroenterologist originally from Cleveland Heights. "But it is my belief that this microorganism will be proven as a human pathogen and clearly operative in these patients with Crohn's.
"Dr. Chiodini should really have the disease changed to his name," continues Shafran. "This is not Crohn's disease. That is a catch-all name that has been applied to a variety of inflammatory problems, of which paratuberculosis is one. My concern here as a physician and father of two children is that the animal source of this infection is dairy cattle. ...My population [of Crohn's patients] that is being treated with antibiotics, I've warned them of a possible animal source for obtaining the infection, and I don't want them to reinfect themselves. I've told them to look for ultra-pasteurized milk and to cook their meat well."
"Barry Marshall suggested that Helicobacter caused ulcers, and he was ridiculed," says Hermon-Taylor. "And this was a bug that you could see by looking down the microscope, grow in a simple culture system in the lab, test for immunologically pretty simply, and ordinary tablets readily available to doctors could make it go away. And it still took eight years for the penny to drop.
"Now we've got a bug that you can't see, can't grow, hides under the immunological radar, is a bastard to kill, and the problem it's causing is far, far greater. If Rod Chiodini and I are wrong, the magnitude of the problem will only be the economic losses of farm animals, which is costing the U.S. somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion a year. If Rod Chiodini and I are right, then, oh dear, oh dear. We have a big problem. It's going to take a lot to put it right."
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