Mycobacterium avium sub. paratuberculosis in tissue samples of Crohn's disease patients.

Crohn's disease is a non-specific chronic transmural inflammatory disease. The disease was associated with a frameshit mutation in the NOD2 gene. Nevertheless, other researchers associated the presence of M. paratuberculosis within the intestinal tissues of patients with the disease. An adapted "in situ hybridization" technique was used to detect IS900 M. paratuberculosis DNA in paraffin embedded tissue from Crohns tissue disease samples. We were able to identify M. paratuberculosis DNA in around 69% of the paraffine embedded intestinal samples of Crohn's disease patients analysed. The presence of M. paratuberculosis DNA in the intestinal samples analysed does not necessarily mean that M. paratuberculosis is responsible for Crohn's disease. Our results support the hypothesis that infection may be caused by cell wall defective M. paratuberculosis since no bacteria were detected by Ziehl Neelsen stain.