Ulcerative Colitis

Flare-ups come and go, causing symptoms that vary in intensity from person to person and time to time, but include severe abdominal cramps and diarrhea.

And because she takes a powerful steroid drug that can compromise her immune system, Fisher can’t go on ski trips or participate in group sports like her peers.

Even a cold can make her a prisoner of her own home, and Fisher was once hospitalized for an inflammation of the membrane surrounding her heart as a result of complications related to the treatment of her condition.

Yet Fisher has not allowed Crohn’s to spoil her zest for life or her determination to live as normal a life as possible.

She is an honours student at Herzliyah High School in St.

Laurent and has been an active volunteer with the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada (CCFC).

Last year, she was named teen spokesperson for the foundation’s annual Heel ‘N’ Wheel fundraiser at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

On June 10, while not repeating that role, she will be on hand at the 2006 event to welcome the crowd and walk the walk, and she is continuing to serve on the planning committee for the fundraiser.

“From the time you are diagnosed, in a way, it forces you to mature more quickly,” said Fisher, who was joined for the interview by her mother, Rina, who has also been active in CCFC.

Last year, Rina Fisher helped organize the All That Glitters gala even...

In the long term, patients with How it works: The mechanism that leads to IBD is not well understood.

But it has long been suspected that IBD damages the bowel wall as a result of an aberrant and overactive immune response—one in which activated immune cells release toxic materials that hurt nearby cells.

The same kind of "autoimmune" damage is most likely the underlying cause of other diseases in which cells of the immune system destroy normal tissue cells—multiple sclerosis, for instance, and Type 1 diabetes.

The cells responsible for this kind of damage are called Th1 cells.The diseases we typically think of as "allergic" diseases, by contrast—asthma, for instance, or food allergies, or eczema—are activated by materials released by a related immune cell, the Th2 cell.

Fascinating to immunologists is our state of Th1-Th2 balance.

If the Th1 cells are intentionally stimulated, then the Th2 cells become less active, and vice versa—activated Th2 cells tone down Th1 cells, which is exactly what helps relieve IBD.The icky part: An audacious and creative scientist at the University of Iowa, Dr.

Joel Weinstock, asked this question: What if the bowel of a patient with IBD was stimulated to increase the Th2 immune response and reduce the activity of the Th1 cells damaging the bowel wall?

Hmmm—how to do it?

Int...