The Wellbeing program on 2NURFM at the University of Newcastle (Australia) has an extensive collection of interviews available for download, including an interview on 20th February 2007 with Dr Thomas Borody, Director of the Centre for Digestive Diseases (Sydney, Australia).

The interview gives a brief overview of current thinking on Crohn’s Disease, touching on the common questions asked by the newly diagnosed and their friends/family, including:

• What causes Crohn’s disease?
• Is Crohn’s disease the same as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)?
• Is it contagious?
• Can you pass it on to your children?
• Is Crohn’s Disease related to diet?
• How do you diagnose Crohn’s disease?
• What prompts a flare or relapse? What happens to someone when they flare? Can you predict flares?
• What sorts of medications have been used to treat Crohn’s Disease in the past and what new treatments are emerging?
• What are the long term effects of steroidal treatment?

Within the available 24 minutes, Dr Borody does not explore any of these issues in great detail but does provide a basic summary from the viewpoint of a doctor at the forefront of gastrointestinal research, and also observes how the medical community is changing their thinking and treatment approaches to Crohn’s disease.

Worthwhile listening, particularly suitable for family members or loved ones who want to learn more – they will appreciate this relatively brief but very informative snapshot of Crohn’s disease.

From the interview …

… for many years it [the cause of Crohn’s Disease] was thought to be autoimmune but … now there is overwhelming evidence that it is caused by an infective agent called mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP) probably in the majority of cases … (at 0:57)

… we expect that if ultimately we can kill and cure MAP we expect ultimately to find a cure … (at 12:14)

… we have old way of thinking and new way of thinking, in the past we used to think of relapses and remissions … treatment is aimed at inducing a remission… with the new therapy with antibiotics we now get such complete healing that we can get prolonged disappearance of Crohn’s provided the patient takes the antibiotics, so the nature of the disease is being changed by the treatment … it’s just starting to take off … (at 12:58)

… the old therapy used to be immunosuppression … more recently immune modulators … these are aimed at reducing our body’s response to the infection that causes the inflammation … we are moving away from this and using we are more and more anti-mycobacterium antibiotics without any immune suppression … future therapy will be essentially antibiotics … (at 12:36)