Staying Close With Dogs Shields You from Crohn’s Disease

A new study shows individuals who were raised in a cleaner environment are more likely to develop Crohn's disease.

Young children who grow up with a dog or in a large family may have some protection later in life from a common inflammatory bowel disease known as Crohn’s disease, according to a study to be presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2022.

What Is Crohn’s Disease?

Inflammatory Bowel Disease - Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment & Prevention
Inflammatory bowel disease involves chronic inflammation of the colon and small intestine. Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain and weight loss.

‘Childhood exposure to microbes by living with pet dogs or a large family may protect an individual from developing Crohn's disease later in life.’

Crohn’s disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that affects around half a million people in the U.S. It most often develops in young adults, people who smoke, and those with a close family member who has IBD.

Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, and weight loss. Treatments currently aim to prevent symptom flare-ups through diet modification, medication, and surgery.

Currently, researchers are digging into the concept of hygiene hypothesis and questioning its role in Crohn’s disease.

Can Ultra-Processed Food Cause Inflammatory Bowel Disease?
Ultra-processed food is linked to higher risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, further studies are needed to identify the contributory factors in processed foods that might be responsible for these associations.

Cleaning Up the Hygiene Hypothesis

The hygiene hypothesis is a theory that suggests the lack of exposure to microbes early in life may lead to a lack of immune regulation toward environmental microbes.

Genetic Test to Predict Inflammatory Bowel Disease Risk in Children
New genetic test helps in early diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease in children and also predict its severity.

In this new study, researchers used an environmental questionnaire to collect information from nearly 4,300 first-degree relatives of people with Crohn’s disease enrolled in the Crohn’s and Colitis Canada Genetic, Environmental, and Microbial (CCC-GEM) project.

Using responses to the questionnaire and historical data collected at the time of recruitment, researchers analyzed several environmental factors, including family size, the presence of dogs or cats as household pets, the number of bathrooms in the house, living on a farm, drinking unpasteurized milk and drinking well water. The analysis also included age at the time of exposure.

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Walnut consumption is shown to be protective against inflammation such as ulcerative colitis by changing the metabolites in the fecal stream and tissues.

They found that exposure to dogs, particularly from ages 5 to 15, was linked with healthy gut permeability and balance between the microbes in the gut and the body’s immune response all of which might help protect against Crohn’s disease. Similar effects were observed across all age groups.

But they did not see the same results with cats and are still trying to determine why. It could also happen because dog owners get outside more often with their pets or live in areas with more green space, which is shown to protect against Crohn’s.

Another protective factor seemed to be living with three or more family members in the first year of life, which was associated with microbiome composition later in life.

The gut microbiome is believed to play a role in several health conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

These findings may assist physicians in asking detailed questions of patients to determine who is at the highest risk. However, the early life environmental factors were assessed by questionnaires, so caution is warranted in interpreting these results due to possible recall bias at recruitment.

The reasons dog ownership and larger families appear to protect Crohn’s remain unclear. We hope researchers would find the answers soon.

Source-Eurekalert