Measles is more prevalent in Crohn's disease patients. A multicentre Israeli study

The question whether there is a transmissible pathogenetic agent as a cause for Crohns disease, remains unanswered. Measles virus has been the subject of many intensive studies, in the attempt to find a role for it in the pat hogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease. Whether an early infection with me asles virus may predispose to Crohn's disease in later life is still not cl ear. We conducted a large scale multicentre study, in order to obtain suffi cient data to answer this question. To do so, we compared inflammatory bowe l disease patients, with Crohns disease or ulcerative colitis, with two mat ched control groups: clinical controls, and community controls. A total of 531 patients, 271 with ulcerative colitis and 260 with Crohns disease were interviewed, as well as 903 matched controls. Blood from 104 inflammatory b owel disease patients and 50 controls was tested for antibodies to measles virus. We did not find any differences related to measles vaccination, eith er in Crohns disease or in ulcerative colitis. Exposure to measles in child hood was more frequent in Crohns disease patients than in their controls, t he difference being statistically significant [p<0.05) in relation to commu nity controls. The presence of IgG antibodies to measles virus was higher i n patients with Crohn's disease than in patients with ulcerative colitis or controls (p=0.084). Another observation of interest was the finding that C rohn's disease patients who had measles in childhood, more frequently had l arge bowel disease than those who had not had measles. These data lead us t o postulate that there may be a role for measles infection in Crohn's disea se, even if, at present, this role remains unclear.