40 Fun Facts About Crohn's Disease

Dan O'Bannon's experience of Crohn's disease inspired the chest-bursting scene in which science-fiction film he wrote?

Alien turned the gut pain O'Bannon lived with into a creature that erupts from a crewman's chest. He died from complications of Crohn's in 2009.

Which US president had Crohn's disease surgery for a blocked bowel months before his 1956 re-election?

Dwight D. Eisenhower's operation set reporters phoning Burrill Crohn for three days straight. The doctor assured them the president would heal quickly, and he won that November in a landslide.

Which YouTube star, born Jimmy Donaldson, quit sports as a teenager after a Crohn's disease diagnosis?

MrBeast calls himself an introvert, a trait his mother has linked partly to his ongoing experience of Crohn's.

Which Saturday Night Live comedian from Staten Island was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in his late teens?

Pete Davidson was diagnosed at 17 or 18 and receives intravenous biologic therapy for it. He later co-wrote and starred in the semi-autobiographical film The King of Staten Island.

Which Anglo-Saxon king's lifelong painful illness do modern doctors suspect was Crohn's disease?

Alfred the Great's symptoms were described in detail by his biographer Asser, letting doctors offer Crohn's as a possible diagnosis. His grandson King Eadred seems to have had a similar illness.

Which habit raises the risk of developing Crohn's disease and makes flare-ups more likely?

Smoking tobacco is one of the few risks a patient can change, so quitting is part of treatment. Oddly, the other main inflammatory bowel disease is less common in smokers.

One hypothesis blames the rise of Crohn's disease on bacteria that thrive inside which household appliance?

Refrigerators let cold-loving bacteria such as Yersinia and Listeria keep growing on chilled food. Researchers found Crohn's rose in step with home refrigeration in the US and Europe.

Burrill Crohn's name stuck to Crohn's disease because a 1932 paper listed its three authors how?

Alphabetically, Crohn came ahead of Leon Ginzburg and Gordon Oppenheimer, so his surname stuck. He disliked the label and preferred the plain medical term regional ileitis.

Mike McCready, a Crohn's disease campaigner diagnosed at 21, is the lead guitarist of which Seattle rock band?

Pearl Jam's guitarist plays an annual benefit concert for a Crohn's charity, sometimes in a UFO tribute band called Flight to Mars.

In which country is Crohn's disease still named jointly after a local surgeon who described it in 1904?

Poland calls it Leśniowski-Crohn's disease after Warsaw surgeon Antoni Leśniowski. He described the illness 28 years before Crohn but could not rule out intestinal tuberculosis.

Which common gut condition, often mistaken for Crohn's disease, is ruled out when tests find inflammation?

Irritable bowel syndrome brings similar cramps and diarrhea but no visible damage to the gut wall, and stool markers of inflammation usually stay normal.

Which other inflammatory bowel disease, confined to the large bowel, can be mistaken for Crohn's disease?

Ulcerative colitis can look so similar that some cases are simply labelled indeterminate. Telling them apart matters because the two illnesses can need different treatment.

Which examination, letting doctors take tissue samples, is the best test for diagnosing Crohn's disease?

A colonoscopy can reach the end of the small intestine, where Crohn's most often strikes. Even so, no single test settles every case, so further tests are often needed.

Crohn's disease often damages the terminal ileum, leaving patients short of which nutrient absorbed there?

Vitamin B12 is taken up in that final stretch of small intestine, so people who have had it surgically removed often need regular injections instead.

A shortage of which mineral, lost through slow bleeding, is the commonest cause of anemia in Crohn's disease?

Iron runs low through blood loss and poor diet, and inflammation makes matters worse by raising hepcidin, a hormone that blocks its absorption.

Which word describes the symptom-free spells that Crohn's disease treatment aims to prolong between flare-ups?

Remission can last years or even decades for some people. Because there is no cure, though, the illness usually returns.

Which fast-acting drugs, such as prednisone, calm a Crohn's disease flare but are avoided for long-term use?

Corticosteroids quieten inflammation quickly, but prolonged use brings significant side effects such as low bone mass, so doctors move patients on to other medicines.

In which part of the abdomen, where the small and large intestines meet, is Crohn's disease pain most typical?

Lower right pain means a first attack of Crohn's can be mistaken for appendicitis, which hurts in the same spot.

Many children are first diagnosed with Crohn's disease after doctors notice which problem around puberty?

Stunted growth affects as many as 30% of children with Crohn's, because the illness can appear just when the pubertal spurt in height should begin.

What do doctors call the abnormal tunnels Crohn's disease can bore from the bowel to the bladder or skin?

Fistulas form because Crohn's inflammation can burrow through the full thickness of the bowel wall. Crohn's is the most common cause of those joining the small intestine to the bladder.

After some Crohn's disease operations, waste leaves the body into a bag through which surgically made opening?

A stoma brings the end of the bowel out through the wall of the abdomen. It can be temporary, giving the gut beyond it time to heal before surgeons rejoin the two ends.

For suspected Crohn's disease, which swallowable device checks small intestine that scopes cannot reach?

A pill camera takes several pictures a second as it travels through the gut, beaming them to a recorder the patient carries.

One long-debated theory blames Crohn's disease on the germ behind Johne's disease, an illness of which farm animals?

Cattle with Johne's disease waste away with diarrhea much as Crohn's patients can. A surgeon noted the likeness as early as 1913, and whether the same microbe is to blame is still debated.

The LRRK2 gene, whose variants alter Crohn's disease risk, is better known for its link to which brain disorder?

Parkinson's shares the gene: one LRRK2 variant may raise the risk of Crohn's by about 70%, while another lowers it by 25%.

Infliximab, an antibody drug widely used against Crohn's disease, is built partly from which animal's protein?

Mouse and human sequences are spliced together in infliximab, which is why it is called a chimeric antibody. It began as a wholly mouse antibody, which human immune systems tend to attack.

Kathleen Baker, diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 2010, won gold and silver at the 2016 Olympics in which sport?

Swimming brought Baker a relay gold and a backstroke silver in Rio, six years after her diagnosis. Two years later she set a world record in the 100-meter backstroke.

Which British magician, who appeared to walk across the River Thames, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 13?

Dynamo, born Steven Frayne in Bradford, had part of his intestine removed as a teenager. He crossed the Thames outside the Houses of Parliament to launch his TV series.

Which part of the large bowel does Crohn's disease often spare, giving doctors a clue to the diagnosis?

The rectum is almost always inflamed in the other main inflammatory bowel disease, so finding it healthy amid patchy damage elsewhere points to Crohn's.

At which New York hospital did Burrill Crohn and two colleagues describe Crohn's disease in fourteen patients?

Mount Sinai is where the Burrill B. Crohn Research Foundation was set up in 1983, the year he died, with funding from his widow, Rose.

Unlike Crohn's disease, tuberculosis leaves 'caseating' gut tissue, a word meaning it resembles which food?

Cheese-like dead tissue is the mark of tuberculosis, which Crohn's was long thought to be. Burrill Crohn's research on 1,500 cases helped doctors separate the two.

Which nickname do doctors give the patches of Crohn's disease damage separated by stretches of healthy bowel?

Skip lesions are a fingerprint of Crohn's, because the other main inflammatory bowel disease spreads in one continuous stretch.

Which clusters of immune cells are the microscopic hallmark of Crohn's disease?

Granulomas are walls of immune cells built to seal off something the body cannot clear. Many patients' biopsies show none, so their absence does not rule out Crohn's.

Which white blood cell protein, measured in stool, signals active inflammation in Crohn's disease?

Calprotectin makes up as much as 60% of the soluble protein inside neutrophils, so a high stool level shows those cells are pouring into an inflamed gut.

Which gene, the first linked to Crohn's disease, makes a sensor that recognizes molecules from bacteria?

NOD2 sits on chromosome 16 and helps cells detect bacterial fragments. Faulty versions are more frequent in patients, which makes them a risk factor and not a direct cause.

Which operation widens a section of bowel narrowed by Crohn's disease without removing any intestine?

Strictureplasty was first performed for Crohn's by Emanoel Lee in 1976. In its commonest form the surgeon cuts the tight segment lengthwise and stitches it widthwise.

Which European capital names the system sorting Crohn's disease into narrowing, penetrating and inflammatory types?

Vienna hosted the 1998 world congress where a working party agreed the scheme, which also sorts patients by age at diagnosis and the part of the gut affected.

Which Italian father of anatomical pathology described inflammatory bowel disease before Crohn's disease had a name?

Giovanni Morgagni taught anatomy at Padua for 56 years. He died in 1771, more than 160 years before the paper that put Crohn's name on the illness.

Crohn's disease risk genes overlap with those for which infection, caused like tuberculosis by a mycobacterium?

Leprosy and Crohn's share susceptibility genes, one reason some researchers still suspect that a related microbe helps to trigger the bowel disease.

Which Crohn's disease drug's brand name is short for 'human monoclonal antibody in rheumatoid arthritis'?

Humira was the first fully human antibody drug approved in the United States, and for years it topped the list of the world's best-selling medicines.

Erythema nodosum, the most common skin problem in Crohn's disease, raises tender red lumps usually on which body part?

The shins are where the red nodules usually appear, in around 8% of people with Crohn's. The lumps come from inflammation in the layer of fat beneath the skin.