Crohn's disease and peptic ulcer disease: A personal comparative analysis

Until the Hruska Postulate and its intellectual fulfillment [1-7], Crohn's disease was a disease entity without either cure or validation. The explanation put forward for its pathogenesis is that the body's immune system selectively turned against something within the gastrointestinal tract. That disruption of the immune system's pro-inflammatory Th1 response could produce evidence of mucosal healing and temporary abatement of disease was aggressively pushed as documentation of the concepts validity. Crohn's disease became the linchpin for 193 journals, 86 conferences and 15,631 articles about or related to autoimmunity. When sought for antibodies to a specific target organ could be demonstrated in a number of diseases. In congenital rubella, the presence of anti-islet cell antibodies introduced the hypothesis that autoimmunity was responsible for the higher incidence of abnormal glucose tolerance tests observed [9]. An equally plausible explanation was that the documented viral replication within islet cells of the pancreas sufficiently altered cellular structure so as to create cross-reacting antibodies. Most claims of autoimmunity have been based upon the demonstration of an antibody that cross-reacts with a cell or subunit within the target organ.