CLA for Crohns?

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http://www.nimml.org/838/researchers-discover-novel-immune-modulatory-properties\

-and-clinical-efficacy-of-conjugated-linoleic-acid-in-crohns-disease-patients/

Researchers discover novel therapy for Crohn's disease

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March 16, 2012

BLACKSBURG, Va., March 16, 2012 - The Nutritional Immunology and Molecular

Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) research team at Virginia Tech has discovered

important new information on the efficacy of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) in

treating Crohn's disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). CLA is a

naturally occurring fatty acid found in meat and dairy products known for its

anti-cancer and immune modulatory properties.

In collaboration with the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepathology at

University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the Wake Forest Medical

Center, researchers found that Crohn's patients who took supplementary CLA

showed noticeable improvement. " In our recent open label study of CLA as a

supplement in study subjects with mild to moderate CD there was a marked

improvement in disease activity and quality of life in 50% of the subjects. CLA

was well tolerated by all of the study subjects. These findings are very

encouraging and will need to be verified in a randomized controlled trial, " said

Dr. Kim L. Isaacs, Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The two main manifestations of IBD-Crohn's and ulcerative colitis-afflict over

1.4 million people in the United States. Symptoms include abdominal cramping,

fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, skin and mouth ulcers, and diarrhea or

constipation. In addition, the risk of developing colorectal cancer increases by

about one percent yearly in IBD patients. Currently, there is no cure for

Crohn's disease and the exact causes of it aren't fully understood.

CLA affords those afflicted with mild to moderate IBD an effective treatment

without the unwanted side effects of many synthetic drugs. " Furthermore, we have

demonstrated that probiotic bacteria can produce CLA locally and suppress

colitis. Therefore, CLA can be administered directly in capsules or indirectly

through CLA-producing probiotic bacteria, " said Dr. Raquel Hontecillas, an

Assistant Professor of Immunology at NIMML.

NIMML strives to develop safer and more effective therapies for human chronic

inflammatory diseases from Nature's own medicine cabinet. To achieve this, NIMML

uses advanced computational modeling in addition to mechanistic and clinical

experimentation. " The validation of the anti-inflammatory actions of CLA in the

gut is in line with our goal because CLA is a natural fatty acid found in milk

and ruminant products. The fully integrated bioinformatics, nutrition and

immunology experimentation capabilities of NIMML enable the acceleration of

translational biomedical research from computational and mathematical modeling

into the clinic. CLA is an example of an anti-inflammatory compound in a

pipeline of naturally occurring and synthetic compounds (e.g., abscisic acid,

eleostearic acid, terephthalanilides) with tremendous therapeutic and

prophylactic potential as anti-inflammatories, " said Dr. p Bassaganya-Riera,

a Professor of Immunology, principal investigator of this human clinical trial,

and the Director of the NIMML and the Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric

Pathogens.

These findings, reported in the most recent edition of Clinical Nutrition1, were

awarded the American College of Gastroenterology Presidential Poster of

distinction for human clinical trials.

For more information about the pre-clinical and clinical capabilities of the

Laboratory please visit the NIMML Web Portal at

http://www.nimml.org<http://www.nimml.org/>

..

This clinical study was funded by a grant from Cognis GmbH, Monheim, Germany to

p Bassaganya-Riera. Cognis is now part of BASF, The Chemical Company.

1Bassaganya-Riera, J., R. Hontecillas, W.T. Horne, M. Sandridge, H. Herfarth, R.

Bloomfeld, and K. Isaacs (2012) Conjugated linoleic modulates immune responses

in patients with Mild to Moderately active Crohn's disease. Clinical Nutrition.

In Press.

About the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory

The Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) conducts

translational research aimed at developing novel therapeutic and prophylactic

approaches for modulating immune and inflammatory responses. The group combines

computational modeling, bioinformatics approaches, pre-clinical experimentation

and human clinical studies to better understand the mechanisms of immune

regulation at mucosal surfaces and ultimately accelerate the development of

novel treatments for infectious and immune-mediated diseases

http://www.nimml.org<http://www.nimml.org/> In ad.dition, the NIMML team leads

the NIAID-funded Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens

(http://www.modelingimmunity.org<http://www.modelingimmunity.org/>).

About the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute

The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech is a premier

bioinformatics, computational biology, and systems biology research facility

that uses transdisciplinary approaches to science, combining information

technology, biology, and medicine. These approaches are used to interpret and

apply vast amounts of biological data generated from basic research to some of

today's key challenges in the biomedical, environmental, and agricultural

sciences. With more than 320 highly trained multidisciplinary, international

personnel, research at the institute involves collaboration in diverse

disciplines such as mathematics, computer science, biology, immunology,

biochemistry, systems biology, statistics, economics, synthetic biology, and

medicine. The large amounts of data generated by this approach are analyzed and

interpreted to create new knowledge that is disseminated to the world's

scientific, governmental, and wider communities.

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Contact:

Trent

<tel:>

ttrent@...

S. Kalman PhD, RD, FACN

Director, BD - Nutrition & Applied Clinical Trials

Miami Research Associates

6141 Sunset Drive - Suite 301

Miami, FL. 33143

Direct -

Office ext. 5109

Fax

Email: dkalman@...

Web: www.miamiresearch.com<www.mraclinicalresearch.com/>

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