Food Poisoning's Path to Chronic Inflammation.

• Position: BACTERIAL INFECTIONS

Food poisoning may be the unwanted gift that keeps on giving--at least so says a study that was launched to investigate the origin of chronic inflammatory diseases spanning colitis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The researchers reveal how a past history of bacterial infections adds up with age to cause severe inflammatory disease.

Small bacterial infections that may go unnoticed and which clear the body without treatment--such as occurs in mild food poisoning--nevertheless can start a chain of events that leads to chronic inflammation and life-threatening colitis. The findings also may identify the long-mysterious origins of IBD.

"We have discovered an environmental and pathogenic origin of chronic intestinal inflammation in the course of modeling human food poisoning as it occurs repeatedly over the adult lifespan," explains Jamey Marth, director of the Center for Nanomedicine at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and professor at the Sanford Burnham Pre-bys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla.

"Remarkably, salmonellae have figured out a way to disrupt a previously unknown protective mechanism in the gut that normally prevents intestinal inflammation."

The researchers' hypothesis took shape from a few possible clues, starting with...