Key immune cells may help protect against inflammatory bowel disease

A group of specialised immune cells in the gut seems to have a protective role in people with Crohn’s disease, and may help doctors predict how the illness will progress

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

15 September 2023

Crohn’s disease is a condition in which parts of the digestive system become inflamed

Science Photo Library / Alamy

A group of specialised immune cells in the gut may play a key role in controlling the progression of Crohn’s disease.

Crohn’s disease is one of two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that together affect roughly 1 per cent of adults in the UK and the US. However, very little is known about what actually causes them, says Adrian Hayday at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

Immune cells in the gut are thought to play a role, particularly a set of cells called gamma delta T-cells, he says.

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Hayday and his colleagues wanted to better understand what these cells look like in the guts of people with IBD compared with those with healthy guts. To do this, they took gut lining samples from 150 people who were undergoing a colonoscopy, some of whom had IBD.

They found that people with IBD generally had lower numbers of a specialised subset of these immune cells, called V-gamma-4 (Vg4) cells, than those with a healthy gut. These cells are largely found in the gut lining, says Hayday.

But it wasn’t simply the case that those who had fewer Vg4 cells were more likely to have IBD. Instead, specifically for people with Crohn’s disease, the team found that people with fewer of these immune cells in the gut were likely to have more severe disease.