Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are leading the UK’s input into a major initiative to tackle Crohn’s disease: January 2015 British scientists are playing a key role in a global quest to find the causes of an incurable bowel condition.Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are leading the UK’s input into a major initiative to tackle Crohn’s disease.Understanding how the condition takes hold could explain why the incidence of Crohn’s disease is rising dramatically in certain parts of the world, including Scotland.The research is part of the Genetics, Environmental, Microbial (GEM) project. The international study focuses on the immediate families of patients with Crohn’s disease, rather than the patients themselves.Dr Charlie Lees, a Clinical Lecturer at the Centre for Genomic & Experimental Medicine, said: “Over the last ten years we have made significant progress in understanding the genetic underpinnings of Crohn’s disease. However this only accounts for about a third of why somebody gets the disease. We need to look at healthy people and follow them over time to truly understand which factors cause the condition and which are consequences of the inflammation in the gut that occurs as part of the disease.”Read more Tags 2015 Publication date 29 Jul, 2016
