Researchers in the UK appear to have discovered a pivotal genetic cause of inflammatory bowel disease. In a new study Wednesday, the team found evidence of a specific genetic flaw that seems to play a key role in driving immune cells to attack the guts of those with IBD—a flaw found in nearly all the cases they studied. The discovery could lead to new and existing treatments being repurposed for IBD, the authors say. Inflammatory bowel disease is a debilitating and complex digestive condition.
The team’s gene-editing experiments found evidence that ETS2 is crucial to the macrophages’ ability to trigger inflammation, including the bad kind that leads to IBD. They also found that tweaking ETS2 to be more active could make macrophages in the lab resemble the ones seen in IBD patients. And when they looked at the genetic make-up of IBD patients, they found that 95% of patients in their sample carried at least one copy of a specific enhancer variant that seems to boost ETS2 activity.
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