Samples taken from the colons of humans diagnosed with Crohn's disease also show reduced levels of the antimicrobial peptides, or defenses, regulated by the PPAR-gamma protein, they wrote.
Chamaillard said foods or diets containing conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) can also boost PPAR-gamma activity and have been shown to improve colitis and colitis-associated cancer.
CLA is primarily found in milk and meat products.
"In the short-term, managing the disease is what we are looking at, but it may also be that in the future we could develop a way of stopping it," Chamaillard said.
But he added that curing Crohn's disease would mean being able to identify those at highest risk before they contracted it and then being able to boost PPAR gamma-related defenses to ward it off -- both areas that would need more research.
Of all foods, kangaroo meat may have the highest concentration of CLA.[34] Food products (e.g. mutton and beef) from grass-fed ruminants are good sources of CLA, and contain much more of it than those from grain-fed animals.[35] In fact, meat and dairy products from grass-fed animals can produce 300-500% more CLA than those of cattle fed the usual diet of 50% hay and silage, and 50% grain.[36]
Eggs are also rich in CLA, and it has been shown that CLA in eggs survives the temperatures encountered during frying.[37]
Some mushrooms like Agaricus bisporus and Agaricus blazei, are rare vegetable sources of CLA.[38][39]