Ulcerative Colitis Research Website

So I’m sifting around on PubMed. It then occurred to me that maybe some UC’ers haven’t heard of it;

so here is the link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

PubMed is a site that provides access to peer reviewed medical journal articles (research and case reports written by doctors). Type Ulcerative Colitis and you get 30,000 hits.

Below is an example of a journal article hot off the press (just the abstract which is a very brief summary):

2011 Oct;89(7):817-22. doi: 10.1038/icb.2010.165. Epub 2011 Feb 15.

Lactobacillus bulgaricus OLL1181 activates the aryl hydrocarbon receptor pathway and inhibits colitis.

Takamura T, Harama D, Fukumoto S, Nakamura Y, Shimokawa N, Ishimaru K, Ikegami S, Makino S, Kitamura M, Nakao A.

Source

Department of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Yamanashi, Yamanashi, Japan.

Abstract

Increasing evidence suggests that the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) pathway has an important role in the regulation of inflammatory responses. Most recently, we have shown that the activation of the AhR pathway by a potent AhR agonist inhibits the development of dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis, a model of human ulcerative colitis, by the induction of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in the large intestine. Because several strains of probiotic lactic acid bacteria have been reported to inhibit DSS-induced colitis by unidentified mechanisms, we hypothesized that particular strains of lactic acid bacterium might have the potential to activate the AhR pathway, thereby inhibiting DSS-induced colitis. This study investigated whether there are specific lactic acid bacterial strains that can activate the AhR pathway, and if so, whether this AhR-activating potential is associated with suppression of DSS-induced colitis. By using AhR signaling reporter cells, we found that Lactob acillus bulgaricus OLL1181 had the potential to activate the AhR pathway. OLL1181 also induced the mRNA expression of cytochrome P450 family 1A1 (CYP1A1), a target gene of the AhR pathway, in human colon cells, which was inhibited by the addition of an AhR antagonist, α-naphthoflavon (αNF). In addition, mice treated orally with OLL1181 showed an increase in CYP1A1 mRNA expression in the large intestine and amelioration of DSS-induced colitis. Thus, OLL1181 can induce activation of the intestinal AhR pathway and inhibit DSS-induced colitis in mice. This strain of lactic acid bacterium has therefore the potential to activate the AhR pathway, which may be able to suppress colitis.

PMID: 21321579 [PubMed – in process]

Happy hunting,
Peter