Escherichia Coli and Ulcerative Colitis

The clinical features of acute ulcerative colitis in relapse closely resemble those of infectious colitis. Moreover, the disease remains localized to the mucosa of the colon, which is intimately associated with the faecal stream and its abundant microbial flora. Not surprisingly, therefore, much effort has gone into identifying microbial agents that might be an aetiological factor. To review an infective theory in the Diamond Jubilee year of the British Society of Gastroenterology is fitting, since one of the Society's founders, Sir Arthur Hurst, suggested in 1921 that ulcerative colitis might be caused by an infection closely related to Shigella dysenteriae, then known as Bacillus dysenteriae.