Skip to main content
Search

Animal models of inflammatory bowel disease

Published on July 30, 2015   32 min

A selection of talks on Immunology & Inflammation

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
ANJE A. TE VELDE, PHD: Hello. My name is Anje te Velde. I am a TI at the Tytgat Institute for Liver and Intestinal Research in Amsterdam.
0:08
During this talk I will introduce you to the inflammatory bowel diseases. In short, IBD. Then I will give an overview of the different experimental colitis models that are currently used. The field of IBD research has had great benefits from these experimental colitis models in the understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease. We have learned a great deal from these models about the involvement of genetics, the microbiota, and the role of different cells in the development of the disease. Finally, I will give some guidance to the decision-making of which model to choose for your experiments.
0:46
IBD covers two types of chronic intestinal inflammation: Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis. Patients suffer from chronic relapsing intestinal inflammation leading to abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea, weight loss, and fatigue. Most patients are diagnosed between their second and fourth decade of life. Patients need chronic medical treatments. However, refractoriness and loss of response are major problems. Characteristically, Crohn's disease can affect entire gastrointestinal tracts, resulting in discontinuous transmural ulcers, mainly in the terminal ilium and right-sided large intestine. Ulcerative colitis continuously affects the mucosa of the large intestine.
1:34
In the mucosa, there's the tight regulation of the immune response, characterized in the normal situation by a balance between a sufficient response to potential pathogens, and no response to nonpathogenic commensal bacteria and compounds of the diet.