Dowdle said that patients usually experience extreme, chronic, often bloody diarrhea and abdominal pain and cramping. This is accompanied by malabsorption of nutrients from food, fatigue, fever and dehydration. Crohn's patients are usually thin and nutritionally compromised. The body's immune system somehow sees the intestines as the enemy. It begins attacking the intestines as a foreign object creating chronic and uncontrolled inflammation.
Researchers have yet to determine the origin of the disease.
Infection, environmental insult, genetic predisposition are all possibilities, but it is known that the disease seems to strike people in their 20s and 60s affecting males and females equally. A physician's response to a diagnosis of Crohn's disease is to try to induce remission initially using prednisone and adding sulfasalazine or mesalamine in hopes of reducing inflammation. This down-regulates the body's immune system, Dowdle said, explaining that has been the best way to manage the inflammation and tissue damage. But we still have patients who fail miserably. Even surgery, which is used sparingly, fails to cure the disease.