# New Variant of IBD Observed in Children with Developmental Disorders



## JeanG (Oct 20, 1999)

This is about IBD, and not IBS, but they do talk about the brain-gut connection here. I found it interesting.The URL for this article is: http://psychiatry.medscape.com/reuters/pro...002epid006.html New Variant of IBD Observed in Children With Developmental Disorders --------------------------------------------------------------------------------WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) Oct 3 - Children with developmental disorders seem to be at risk of developing a distinct variant of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that lacks the typical features of either Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis. Dr. Andrew J. Wakefield, of the Royal Free and University College Medical School, in London, compared the clinical and histologic features of enterocolitis in 60 children with developmental disorders, 3 to 16 years old, and 37 developmentally normal controls who underwent evaluation for possible IBD. Of the developmentally disabled children, 50 had autism, five had Asperger's syndrome, two had disintegrative disorder, one had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, one had schizophrenia and one had dyslexia. "The combination of ileocolonic lymphoid nodular hyperplasia and colitis in children with developmental disorders distinguished them from developmentally normal children with similar symptoms (including abdominal pain and constipation) in whom lymphoid nodular hyperplasia and histopathological change were uncommon," Dr. Wakefield and colleagues say in the September issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology. They note that the findings are consistent with those from other recent studies, and in the new study inflammatory changes were detected in the upper gastrointestinal tract that were distinct in children with autism and IBD compared with developmentally normal children with IBD. The accumulating evidence of a specific variant of enterocolitis in autism makes it "tempting to suggest that a gut-brain interaction" may be involved in the pathogenesis of what researchers are beginning to call "autistic enterocolitis," the authors note. They explain that recent detection of opioid peptides of dietary origin in urine from some affected children is further evidence of this possibility. But in a related editorial, Drs. Eamonn M. M. Quigley and David Hurley, of the National University of Ireland in Cork, say that "there is, at present, insufficient evidence to establish either a direct or indirect link...between an inflamed gut and the brain, in autism." They admit that the new study does raise "many challenging questions" with regard to this hypothesis. Regardless, the duo cautions: "We must, in particular, resist the temptation to predict causation without the necessary evidence; to do so could engender false hope and further burden families who already have more than their fair share of crosses to bear." Am J Gastroenterol 2000;95:2154-2156,2285-2295.


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