Public Food for thought: Crohn's=Mycobaterial infection?

EDIT: Oops, maybe I posted it in the wrong section? Sorry, please move it if so.
Moved to the public forum - Health News and Research Unrelated to ME/CFS

Perhaps some of you have heard of the hypothesis that Crohn's disease is caused by Mycobaterium Avium Paratuberculosis(MAP). The idea of MAP causing disease in humans came from the fact that it causes a very similar disease to Crohn's in cattle, called Johne's disease. I think it has also been tested with monkeys as well, which, unfortunately, did develop similar disease to Crohn's, after exposure to MAP, so the hypothesis is very strong.

For quite a long time nobody believed that, and most researchers still don't, because unlike in cattle, MAP is not easily detected in humans, because we don't actively shed it (except maybe in one case report from India) and the studies were inconsistent as to whether Crohn's patients have higher levels of MAP in blood.

Researchers believe that MAP persists in a human body in a different state than cattle and is hiding from the immune system. If I remember correctly, genes that increase mycobacterial infection risk also increase risk for Crohn's.

Crohn's researcher prof, John Hermon-Taylor (from infmaous King’s College London) has reportedly created a test that is sensitive and sepcific for MAP infection in humans, which should be quite exciting for Crohn's sufferers, because he's now starting trials with a vaccine which is designed to treat this infection and possibly reverse the disease. This would be quite a major development in so called "autoimmune" diseases, because it would show that pathogens can and do persist in humans without an easy way to detect them. He says that he finds MAP in every Crohn's patients. That's something. There have also been some trials with triple antibiotic therapy (targeting MAP) for Crohn's which were relatively successful and anecdotally, some people have even been cured, without any need to continue therapy.

I'm of course writing this in regards to ME/CFS. Although it seems that many have given up on a single pathogen theory, I still think it's possible that one main player is responsible for the most damage. It's just that it may be terribly difficult to find.

Another important thing is that some healthy people also seem have this infection, but don't develop disease, which would support some form of immune defficiency, stress, microbiome factor as a necessity for developing full blown Crohn's, what could also be happening in ME, with some other pathogen(perhaps virus?).

Also, they're hypothesising that MAP may be involved in MS and other conditions.

For more info:
The Consensus from the Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis (MAP) Conference 2017
https://humanpara.org/
http://www.crohnsmapvaccine.com/

 

Although sometimes it seems mentioned as an afterthought, both Ian Lipkin and Mady Hornig have said that will also be looking at fungi as part of the Microbiome Discovery Project.

 

We all drink milk, don't we? I can't say for sure, but I think there's some evidence that pasteurization doesn't kill MAP effectively, so basically it would come down to the immune system of the individual.