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Cognitive impairment in Crohn’s disease is associated with systemic inflammation, symptom burden and

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Posted 10/7/2016 10:31 AM (GMT 0)
Cognitive impairment in Crohn’s disease is associated with systemic inflammation, symptom burden and sleep disturbance

ueg.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/08/07/2050640616663397.full

"Crohn's disease patients often complain of cognitive

disfunction, which is often ignored by health care

providers. The researchers in this study administered the

industry standard Subtle Cognitive Impairment Test

(SCIT) to 49 patients with Crohn's disease and 31 healthy

controls. Not only did the Crohn's disease patients have

higher depression scores, they had poorer sleep quality

scores, despite sleeping for a longer duration than healthy

controls. Response times were also significantly slower for

Crohn's patients. Interestingly, clinical measures of

inflammation such as CRP level and increased abdominal

pain correlated significantly with slower response times.

The researchers compared the degree of cognitive

impairment in Crohn's patients to greater than the

impairment found in healthy controls who have a blood

alcohol concentration of .05g/100ml (which is over the

legal driving limit in Australia and most of Europe.) These

finding support the anecdotal observations that Crohn's

patients have more difficulty with concentration, clouded

thought and memory lapses than healthy controls."

from: /docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://thecrohnsinfection.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/The-MAP-Gap-10-1-16.pdf&hl=en_US
Posted 10/7/2016 10:36 AM (GMT 0)
From the discussion:
"The presence of deficits in response time but not in error rates indicates that patients with CD have impairments in the speed of signal processing rather than in the efficiency of processing or decision making.25 Importantly, this decrement in the speed of processing was equivalent for exposure durations in both the head and tail of the response curve, suggesting that the impairment is due to problems in rapid automatic processes that are involved in detecting, coding and integrating perceptual information. It is noteworthy that the slowed response times were significantly correlated with clinical indices of inflammation, such as the HBI scores and serum titres of CRP. This finding is consistent with recent reports that elevations in serum titres of cytokines, including CRP, are associated with significant increases in response times on cognitive tasks in middle-aged and elderly populations.27,28 While the basis of this effect is not fully understood, experiments on rodents have shown that inflammation of the colon results in an upregulation of inflammatory activity in microglia of the hippocampus that in turn causes profound impairments in post-synaptic responses.29 If such decrements in post-synaptic responsiveness occur in humans with CD, they could readily account for the slower response times observed in the present study."
Posted 10/7/2016 12:17 PM (GMT 0)
i have both Crohns and fibromyalgia. I had never heard that Crohns patients had cognitive memory problems so I find this very interesting! Fibromyalgia patients have cognitive memory problems too but it isn't an inflammatory illness. But I do have several inflammatory llnesses and Crohns is one of them.

My inflammatory markers are high. I had my colon removed 29 years ago but yet continue to have cognitive memory problems.

It is said that the cognitive memory problems with fibro is due to the fact we don't get in the R.E.M. stage of sleep where the body starts to heal. I "sleep" seven hours a night but it's actually more like dozing. I'm not sure if this is caused by fibro, Crohns, or both but this is the explanation given for the cognitive memory problems for fibromyalgia patients. Perhaps this is what is going on with Crohns patients too. By the way, I almost never dream....don't get in a deep enough sleep to do that.

Sherrine
Posted 10/7/2016 2:53 PM (GMT 0)
Sherrine, you can try magnesium supplements (chelated, high quality ones) for your fibro and sleep problems. It helps.

Do you know your vitamin d levels?

And lastly, have you ever tried low dose naltrexone (LDN) ? People use it for crohn's and fibromyalgia. Maybe worth a try. It also gives you vivid dreams in sleep.
Posted 10/7/2016 3:26 PM (GMT 0)
I do take magnesium malate...a form of magnesium that has shown to help people with fibro. I also take 5,500 IU of Vitamin D3 daily just to keep my D in the normal ranges. No, I haven't tried LDN and don't plan on it either. I'm doing quite well with all my health issues and feel totally blessed.

Thank you for the suggestions though. I was just sharing another perspective on what can possibly cause cognitive memory problems.

Sherrine
Posted 10/7/2016 5:38 PM (GMT 0)
Hey Sherine, I just found this...dated 2015.....




/www.verywell.com/inflammation-in-fibromyalgia-716012
Posted 10/9/2016 12:03 AM (GMT 0)
Well, that explains a lot.
Posted 10/9/2016 1:27 PM (GMT 0)

JaSanne said...
Well, that explains a lot.

It so does.

My brain fog is the equivalent of a 1950s London pea souper where you couldn't see more than a metre in front of you. If only I could apply the Clean Air Act to my brain fog.
Posted 10/9/2016 7:35 PM (GMT 0)
Hey NCOT, have you looked into meditation at all.... check out this link....

www.autismfile.com/blog/asperger%E2%80%99s-syndrome-in-the-present-moment
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