Attempts at Culturing Mycobacteria from Tissues of Patients with Crohn’s Disease

Since the description of regional enteritis by Crohn, Ginzburg and Oppenheimer (1) in 1932 only the report of Burnham et al. (2) drew attention to a mycobacterial etiology in Crohn’s disease. In 1978 he isolated Mycobacterium kansasii from one mesenteric lymph node and cell-wall-deficient organisms from 81 % of mesenteric lymph nodes obtained from patients with Crohn’s disease. A mycobacterial etiology in Crohn’s disease was revived by the detection of Mycobacterium paratuberculosis in Crohn’s disease in 1984 (3). Chiodini found Mycobacterium paratuberculosis in the mucosa of patients with Crohn’s disease in 15.4 % and in addition cell-wall-deficient organisms in 46.2 % (4) whereas all controls remained negative. These data are the basis for the connection of Crohn’s disease with Johne’s disease (5) in veterinary medicine. Johne’s disease is a chronic granulomatous and wasting disease of ruminants caused by Mycobacterium paratuberculosis. Both Crohn’s disease and Johne’s disease show remarkable similarities which make them indistinguishable in clinic, epidemiology and pathology (6).