First-ever Link Between Intestinal Inflammation and Systemic Chromosome Damage

Celiac.com 06/12/2009 - In a medical first, researchers at UCLA have made a connection between intestinal inflammation and systemic chromosome damage in mice, a discovery that may pave the way for early identification and treatment of human inflammatory disorders, some of which raise the risk for various kinds of cancer, according a study published in Cancer Research.

Scientists discovered that local intestinal inflammation caused DNA damage to lymphocytes of the peripheral blood circulating throughout the body. So, contrary to conventional medical wisdom, chromosome damage is not limited to the immediate intestine, but involves body tissues far away from the actual inflammation. Their results showed single- and double-strand DNA breaks in the blood, and chromosome damage in peripheral blood indicating systemic genetic damage.

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Inflammatory diseases have been linked to some lymphomas and abdominal, liver and colorectal cancers, said Robert Schiestl, lead author, and professor of pathology, radiation oncology and environmental health sciences and a Jonsson Cancer Center scientist.

Finding inflammation early – before any symptoms surface - and treating the associated causes quickly may prevent the damage that eventually triggers these cancers, he said. Before the study, researchers had no knowledge that "intestinal inflammation causes damage that can be found throughout the body,” said Schiestl, adding that this "may help explain how inflammation leads to these cancers.”

Intestinal inflammation can be caused by such maladies as Crohn’s disease, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis and Celiac disease. Nearly 1.5 million Americans, and 2.2 million Europeans currently suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases and global incidence is on the rise, Schiestl said.

The discovery opens up the possibility of using chromosome damage in the peripheral circulating blood as a biomarker to spot intestinal inflammation before any symptoms surface.

Researchers were able to detect chromosome damage in the blood of specially bred mice before the onset of colitis, said Aya Westbrook, a graduate student of the UCLA Molecular Toxicology Interdepartmental Program and the paper's first author. Westbrook added that disease severity correlated directly with higher levels of chromosome damage in the blood.

Chromosome damage, according to study author Dr. Jonathan Braun, professor and chairman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCLA, may be the “earliest detectable indicator” of intestinal inflammatory disease. Currently, the only way to diagnose patients with inflammatory bowel disease is through full endoscopic exam, which is both invasive and costly. In theory, Braun said, a biomarker blood test might replace the invasive endoscopic exam and allow physicians to identify early inflammatory disease before it develops fully.

Spotting disease and being able to ward it off early is one of the Holy Grails of all medicine. This breakthrough could “change the natural history of these diseases,” Braun said. For the first time, doctors might have a tool that can actually help spot inflammation, the earliest precursor to multiple kinds of cancer, at its earliest stages, long before any actual disease develops. This could lead to the prevention of tens of thousands of cancers.

UCLA researchers have launched a clinical trial to confirm their findings in humans, Schiestl said. They’re focusing on patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. They're hoping the discovery will permit them to test new strategies for treating smoldering disease, which we’ve never been able to identify before,” Schiestl said, adding that they might be able to assess new drugs for treating early inflammatory disease.

The research may also show why some patients with inflammatory disease develop cancers, while others endure chronic inflammation for decades, yet remain cancer-free. Researchers suspect that some unknown molecular mechanisms might work to protect some patients and not others. Finding such mechanisms might lead to tests for predicting which patients with intestinal inflammatory diseases are predisposed to cancer.

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