Eight year bowel disease warning as changes found 'long before symptoms'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can be found up to eight years before diagnosis, research has found.The beginnings of IBD start a long time before symptoms occur, suggest findings from the Francis Crick Institute and Aalborg University in Denmark.The research has shown changes can appear in blood tests up to three years before a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis, and up to eight years before Crohn's disease is diagnosed.The findings may enable doctors to take preventative action before symptoms appear or to prescribe medication when it will be most effective.It had previously been understood that most people have symptoms for about a year before diagnosis, but significant bowel damage is often seen, suggesting changes have been taking place for a lot longer.Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are together known as inflammatory bowel diseases.

The conditions are incurable and involve excessive inflammation in the gut, leading to symptoms such as abdominal pain and diarrhoea."Our research shows that the bowel damage we’re seeing at the point of diagnosis is just the tip of the iceberg," said James Lee, group leader of the Genetic Mechanisms of Disease Laboratory at the Crick."So many changes are subtly taking place in the body before the disease takes hold.

This has huge implications for prevention as it highlights that there’s a window of opportunity for treatment."Dr Lee continued: "We don’t yet know whether preventative measures like changing diet or stopping smoking would stop someone getting these diseases, but this opens the door to that possibility."It also underscores the importance of early diagnosis and treatment, as many of the changes in the gut are likely to have been happening long before people become