Crohn's disease and ruminant farming. Got lactase?

The evolutionarily plausible framework provided by this association with the species suffering a similar inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), its coincidence with the expanse of a cattle breed that could act as a Trojan horse, in addition to recent microbiological, immunological and therapeutical observations consistent with a slow infection type of pathogenesis, supports a mycobacterial aetiology of human IBD. Further research challenging the hypothesis of a shared aetiology by Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis of human and ruminant IBD by increasing research on the pathogenesis of the latter and focusing on effective specific antibiotic or immune aetiological therapies seems to be the obvious next step. Either confirmation or rejection of the hypothesis presented here should create new knowledge that will bring closer the eradication of a cause of human and animal suffering.