Digestive diseases and sciences
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Theories on the etiology of Crohn's disease have included extrinsic agents and intrinsic bowel wall defects. We sought to determine the presence of immunoreactive antigens specific to Crohn's disease tissue by modifying the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Tissue proteins were extracted from four patients with Crohn's disease and from four normal segments of colon from patients with colonic cancer. ⋯ These Crohn's disease sera also showed preferential recognition of glycoproteins extracted from Crohn's disease tissue compared to glycoproteins from normal colonic tissue (P less than 0.0005). The nature of these immunoreactive proteins, whether extrinsic or intrinsic, is not yet known. The ELISA may help in further characterization of Crohn's disease tissue-specific glycoprotein(s) and to develop a clinically useful serological test.