Scientists at St Georges hospital in London are claiming there is a link between Crohns disease - a debilitating digestive problem that affects more than 40,000 people in the UK - and drinking milk. Professor John Hermon-Taylor, a surgeon, and his team have reported finding minute traces of an organism known as myco-bacterium paratubercolosis in two thirds of the intestinal tissue removed from Crohns patients after surgery and although the National Dairy Council has disputed such claims on the basis of its own studies, the hospital researchers say they have also found the organism in supplies of whole, pasteurised milk. Hermon-Taylor and his colleagues are suggesting mycobacterium, which causes Johnes disease in sheep and cattle (a condition similar to Crohns disease in humans), is being transferred through food and water systems and can sometimes survive the process of pasteurisation. The full results of the study will be published in September and these may be convincing enough for sufferers to be told, for the first time since the condition was originally diagnosed in 1932, that scientists have discovered a concrete cause. Links: Crohn’s Disease – Is There a Microbial Etiology

Comment from a reader for information only:

'l have read your findings of the link of drinking milk, and crohns disease l have often thought that this could be the cause, because l used to drink gallons of the stuff, and every time l have been hospitalised l have found other patients with crohns also drink lots of milk. l don't know if this is another line for you to follow, but l find when l have any thing that has coconut in this aggravates my crohns and has landed me in the hospital, so now l avoid every thing with it in and have not had any probs. l have also changed my milk to soya milk and find that l no longer have any twinges that l used to get reguly before,Hope you don't mind me putting my thoughts forward but having suffered this disease for some 31 years have eliminated only 3 things that seem to cause my crohns to flare up, the latter one being bran so l look at labels and if find any of the things lv'e listed l dont eat it. Regards P. W.'