| A recent article in the Daily Mail entitled: 'Make milk safer, food watchdog tells dairies'(1) states the case that an avian Mycobacterium Paratuberculinum, a bacteria that can survive the pasteurisation (to 72 degrees) of milk and which causes Johne's disease in cattle, is becoming a zoonosis responsible for causing Crohn's disease in humans. The organism can be cultured from the breast milk of patients with Crohn's disease (2). This strengthens the hypothesis of Prof. John Herman -Taylor who is of the opinion that the sixfold increase in the disease since the 1950's can be attributed to this organism. The incidence of the disease, which often affects young adults and children, is 2.6 per 100,000 in Welsh children (3) with a mean age of presentation of 12 years old. Evidence from 2 small trials of anti-tuberculosis treatment maintaining remission induced by steroids should be interpreted with caution (4). Clinicians are trying to reduce the use of steroids (5) and the evidence will be reviewed for the use of enteral feeding in the management of Crohn's disease.
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