UMDNJ Opens New Facility 

Published in the Home News Tribune 7/29/98 

By CINDA BECKER
HEALTH WRITER

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey yesterday opened the state's first center dedicated exclusively to Crohn's disease and colitis, two common chronic disorders whose causes have stymied researchers. 

Based at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, the Crohn's and Colitis Center of New Jersey offers a multidisciplinary approach for diagnosing and treating the two inflammatory bowel diseases. 

The effort is seeded with state and federal grants. A $100,000 state appropriation will be devoted to the clinical side of the debilitating diseases. Meanwhile, a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health is earmarked for basic research. 

The dual mission is a solid match for Dr. Kiron M. Das, the center's new director. Das, chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, has spent 25 years researching the causes of the two diseases, which afflict an estimated 2 million people nationwide and 80,000 New Jersey residents. 

Both diseases cut across all demographic groups and are characterized by flare-ups of severe abdominal pain and diarrhea that can derail people in their prime. 

"It's much harder for children because it's not the type of disease you can sit around and share with your friends," said Rosemarie Golombos, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America in Jamesburg. "If you have severe, ulcerative colitis, your life revolves around the bathroom." 

Crohn's disease can affect any segment of the digestive tract from the esophagus to the rectum, causing inflammation, thickening or ulcerations that can lead to intestinal obstructions. 

Colitis is an inflammation of the colon. Although it often can be treated with medication, at its worst, ulcerative colitis can require a surgical colectomy in which the colon is removed. 

The NIH money will allow Das to continue his research into the causes, which may be autoimmune or genetic in nature, he said. He and other researchers already have identified a colonic epithelial protein that may be at play at the molecular level. Everybody has the protein, Das said yesterday, but some people with ulcerative colitis appear to develop an immune response to the protein that stimulates the immune system to reject it as if it were a foreign bacteria or virus. 

Cyndy Coppotelli, a doctoral student at Rutgers University, tested positive for the antibody. Her mother did, too, even though she has never shown any symptoms of the disease. 

Coppotelli diagnosed with colitis seven years ago at age 28, since has had two children. With Das' help, she has managed the disease fairly well. 

"I've been pretty fortunate," she said. 

Mark Sher, 25, had a different experience. He recently advertised that his business -- Marco's Pizza, around the corner from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital on Easton Avenue -- is under new management. That is practically true, considering he had a prolonged bout of colitis that hospitalized him for weeks at a time from October 1996 though November 1997. 

Sher, a well-built young man, said he lost 60 pounds before he was diagnosed by Das and put on the correct combinations of medications. 

"They say you can't be cured. I'm determined to be the first one to be cured," Sher said. 

Source: Home News Tribune 

Published: July 29, 1998

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