Cows Get Crohn's Disease and They're Giving Us Diabetes

Coad Thomas Dow; Leonardo A Sechi

doi:10.3390/microorganisms7100466

Cows Get Crohn's Disease and They're Giving Us Diabetes

Microorganisms. 2019 Oct 17;7(10):466. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms7100466.

Authors

Coad Thomas Dow¹, Leonardo A Sechi²

Affiliations

¹ McPherson Eye Research Institute, University of Wisconsin, 9431 WIMR, 1111 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI 53705, USA. ctomdow@gmail.com.
² Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Sassari, Viale San Pietro 43b, 07100 Sassari, Italy. sechila@uniss.it.

Abstract

Increasingly, Johne's disease of ruminants and human Crohn's disease are regarded as the same infectious disease: paratuberculosis. Mycobacterium avium ss. paratuberculosis (MAP) is the cause of Johne's and is the most commonly linked infectious cause of Crohn's disease. Humans are broadly exposed to MAP in dairy products and in the environment. MAP has been found within granulomas such as Crohn's disease and can stimulate autoantibodies in diseases such as type 1 diabetes (T1D) and Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Moreover, beyond Crohn's and T1D, MAP is increasingly associated with a host of autoimmune diseases. This article suggests near equivalency between paucibacillary Johne's disease of ruminant animals and human Crohn's disease and implicates MAP zoonosis beyond Crohn's disease to include T1D.

Keywords: Blau syndrome; CARD15; Crohn’s; HERV; HSP65; Hashimoto’s thyroiditis; Johne’s; MAP; Mycobacterium avium ss. paratuberculosis; Parkinson’s disease; SLC11a1; T1D; TRIGR study; ZnT8; lupus; molecular mimicry; multiple sclerosis; rheumatoid arthritis; sarcoidosis; type 1 diabetes mellitus; zoonosis.