Crohn's Disease
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Crohn's Disease trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Crohn's disease is a lifelong inflammatory condition of the digestive tract that often begins in the teens or twenties. It comes and goes in flares, has no cure yet, and is being diagnosed in more and more people around the world, which is why so many patients, relatives and students want to understand it better. This quiz covers the essentials: where in the gut the disease strikes and what it feels like, the complications doctors watch for, the tests used to confirm it, and the medicines and operations that keep it under control. It also explores what researchers have learned about genes, bacteria and everyday risks, and the odd history of how the illness got its name. It is written for anyone who wants to check what they know: people living with Crohn's and their families, nursing and medical students, and trivia fans who like health facts with a story attached. Along the way you will meet a president, a medieval king, an Olympic champion and a few famous entertainers. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dan O'Bannon's experience of Crohn's disease inspired the chest-bursting scene in which science-fiction film he wrote?
Alien
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.
Q 02Which US president had Crohn's disease surgery for a blocked bowel months before his 1956 re-election?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
Q 03Which YouTube star, born Jimmy Donaldson, quit sports as a teenager after a Crohn's disease diagnosis?
MrBeast
MrBeast calls himself an introvert, a trait his mother has linked partly to his ongoing experience of Crohn's.
Q 04Which Saturday Night Live comedian from Staten Island was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in his late teens?
Pete Davidson
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.
Q 05Which Anglo-Saxon king's lifelong painful illness do modern doctors suspect was Crohn's disease?
Alfred the Great
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.
Q 06Which habit raises the risk of developing Crohn's disease and makes flare-ups more likely?
Smoking tobacco
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.
Q 07One hypothesis blames the rise of Crohn's disease on bacteria that thrive inside which household appliance?
Refrigerators
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.
Q 08Burrill Crohn's name stuck to Crohn's disease because a 1932 paper listed its three authors how?
Alphabetically
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.
Q 09Mike McCready, a Crohn's disease campaigner diagnosed at 21, is the lead guitarist of which Seattle rock band?
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam's guitarist plays an annual benefit concert for a Crohn's charity, sometimes in a UFO tribute band called Flight to Mars.
Q 10In which country is Crohn's disease still named jointly after a local surgeon who described it in 1904?
Poland
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.
Q 11Which common gut condition, often mistaken for Crohn's disease, is ruled out when tests find inflammation?
Irritable bowel syndrome
Irritable bowel syndrome brings similar cramps and diarrhea but no visible damage to the gut wall, and stool markers of inflammation usually stay normal.
Q 12Which other inflammatory bowel disease, confined to the large bowel, can be mistaken for Crohn's disease?
Ulcerative colitis
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.
Q 13Which examination, letting doctors take tissue samples, is the best test for diagnosing Crohn's disease?
Q 21After some Crohn's disease operations, waste leaves the body into a bag through which surgically made opening?
A stoma
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.
Q 22For suspected Crohn's disease, which swallowable device checks small intestine that scopes cannot reach?
A pill camera
A pill camera takes several pictures a second as it travels through the gut, beaming them to a recorder the patient carries.
Q 23One long-debated theory blames Crohn's disease on the germ behind Johne's disease, an illness of which farm animals?
Cattle
A colonoscopy
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.
Q 14Crohn's disease often damages the terminal ileum, leaving patients short of which nutrient absorbed there?
Vitamin B12
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.
Q 15A shortage of which mineral, lost through slow bleeding, is the commonest cause of anemia in Crohn's disease?
Iron
Iron runs low through blood loss and poor diet, and inflammation makes matters worse by raising hepcidin, a hormone that blocks its absorption.
Q 16Which word describes the symptom-free spells that Crohn's disease treatment aims to prolong between flare-ups?
Remission
Remission can last years or even decades for some people. Because there is no cure, though, the illness usually returns.
Q 17Which fast-acting drugs, such as prednisone, calm a Crohn's disease flare but are avoided for long-term use?
Corticosteroids
Corticosteroids quieten inflammation quickly, but prolonged use brings significant side effects such as low bone mass, so doctors move patients on to other medicines.
Q 18In which part of the abdomen, where the small and large intestines meet, is Crohn's disease pain most typical?
Lower right
Lower right pain means a first attack of Crohn's can be mistaken for appendicitis, which hurts in the same spot.
Q 19Many children are first diagnosed with Crohn's disease after doctors notice which problem around puberty?
Stunted growth
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.
Q 20What do doctors call the abnormal tunnels Crohn's disease can bore from the bowel to the bladder or skin?
Fistulas
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.
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.
Q 24The LRRK2 gene, whose variants alter Crohn's disease risk, is better known for its link to which brain disorder?
Parkinson's
Parkinson's shares the gene: one LRRK2 variant may raise the risk of Crohn's by about 70%, while another lowers it by 25%.
Q 25Infliximab, an antibody drug widely used against Crohn's disease, is built partly from which animal's protein?
Mouse
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.
Q 26Kathleen Baker, diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 2010, won gold and silver at the 2016 Olympics in which sport?
Swimming
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.
Q 27Which British magician, who appeared to walk across the River Thames, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 13?
Dynamo
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.
Q 28Which part of the large bowel does Crohn's disease often spare, giving doctors a clue to the diagnosis?
The rectum
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.
Q 29At which New York hospital did Burrill Crohn and two colleagues describe Crohn's disease in fourteen patients?
Mount Sinai
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.
Q 30Unlike Crohn's disease, tuberculosis leaves 'caseating' gut tissue, a word meaning it resembles which food?
Cheese
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.