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Some recent reports have claimed that persistent measles virus infection is involved in the aetiology or pathogenesis, or both, of Crohn’s disease. Using a variety of techniques, such as direct electron microscopy, immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridisation, these authors report that measles virus particles, protein or RNA were detected in tissues from patients with Crohn’s disease.1-5 These observations led to the hypothesis that exposure to measles virus early in life, either during pregnancy, or as a consequence of postnatal infection by wild type measles virus or measles vaccination, predisposes to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).6 ,7 These claims prompted publication of several critical commentaries and responses and led to a case control study which did not support an association between measles virus vaccination and IBD.8-19 The comments focused on the possible short-comings of the methods used by the researchers as well as the choice of control cohorts with respect to their exposure to the infectious agent and their incidence of IBD. Thus, for example, in many virus–host systems, it has been shown that diagnosis based on morphology can be misleading as viral structures may resemble normal cellular …
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