Eating Behaviour in Crohn's Disease

Food intake is mainly controlled through interactions between the gut and brain (the homeostatic control) and through our environment, with food exposure, mood and past experiences (the hedonic control) playing a major role. The link between the gut and the brain is mainly controlled through enteroendocrine cells (EC). These cells in the bowel sense nutrients in the food and link with the brain to control how much we eat. They make a number of hormones that link with the brain to control one's eating habits. Crohn's disease (CD) is an inflammatory disease of the bowel which can present with a number of symptoms including weight loss and loss of appetite. We thought some time ago that an increase in the number and function of these EC could play a central role. Since then we have carried out work which has shown that in CD these EC increase in number and produce more hormones after a meal. This finding could have a negative effect on food intake. This would be one explanation to the symptoms so commonly experienced by these patients. In CD we thus feel that there might be an imbalance in the appetite control. We expect an increasingly sensitive gut to food intake and a subdued mood and perception to food reward and that this imbalance will lead to a decrease in food reward and consequently a decrease in food intake. This study will be carried out using Healthy Volunteers and CD patients. We plan to measure food intake though telephone interviews and plan to analyse eating behaviour through 5 questionnaires.This study will help us to improve our understanding of what it is that controls food intake. This will be particularly important to patients with CD who routinely lose weight and appetite.