Elizabeth Lennon, DVM, PhD, DACVIM, has received the 2016 National Phi Zeta Manuscript Award in the Basic Sciences category for outstanding work on early life stress and human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A student of MSU Matilda R. Wilson Endowed Chair Dr. Adam Moeser, she is currently an assistant professor in the University of Tennessee’s Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences.

As many as 1.6 million Americans suffer from IBD, a chronic condition that usually involves severe diarrhea, pain, fatigue, and weight loss. IBD can be debilitating and can lead to life-threatening complications. Each year, as many as 70,000 new cases of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, the most common forms of IBD, are diagnosed in the United States each year.

There is a strong link between life stress and IBD flares in humans, and it is known that stress can trigger important contributors to intestinal inflammation and clinical disease. However, the exact mechanisms of stress-induced IBD exacerbations are still not known.

Lennon’s breakthrough is the identification of a novel model to investigate exactly how early life stress influences the development and course of IBD in adulthood.  She found that neonatal maternal separation in mice triggered the development of severe colitis that was sustained later in life. This represents a surrogate model that can help researchers, including those in Moeser’s lab, move forward more quickly in understanding the link between early life events and lifelong disease.

The team in Moeser’s Gastrointestinal Stress Biology Laboratory is working to gain a fundamental understanding of how stress—particularly early life stress—causes lifelong GI disease in humans and animals. The ultimate goal of the research is to uncover therapeutic targets and identify alternative practices to prevent or treat debilitating GI disorders such as IBD and irritable bowel syndrome.

Lennon’s manuscript, “Early life stress triggers persistent colonic barrier dysfunction and exacerbates colitis in adult IL-10-/- mice,” was published in Inflammatory Bowel Disease, the journal of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.