High prevalence of Mycoplasma pneumonia in intestinal mucosal biopsies from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and controls

Intestinal microflora are believed to play an important role in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Mycoplasma have been suggested previously as organisms of ubiquitous distribution with the potential to cause inflammatory diseases, including IBD in susceptible individuals. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of the presence of M. pneumoniae DNA in intestinal biopsies from patients with IBD and on-IBD controls using a microplate polymerase chain reaction-hybridization assay (PCR-ELISA). A total of 260 endoscopic biopsies (49 from 19 patients with Crohn's disease, 76 from 27 patients with ulcerative colitis, and 135 from 43 non-IBD controls) were used in this study. Overall, M. pneumoniae-specific DNA was detected in 100 endoscopic biopsy samples (38.5%). Among them, the detection rate of M. pneumoniae DNA was significantly higher in biopsies from patients with CD (59.2%) than in those from patients with UC (26.3%) or non-IBD controls (37.7%) (chi (2) = 13.65, P less than or equal to 0.001). The high prevalence of M. pneumoniae in both IBD patients and controls suggest this organism is ubiquitous and may persist in the intestinal mucosa. Epidemiological studies in IBD suggest acquisition of some agents early in life probably during epidemics in temperate latitudes. M. pneumoniae could be one of the ubiquitous agents implicated in the pathogenesis of IBD.