Association of chronic non-bacterial osteomyelitis with Crohn’s disease but not with CARD15 gene variants

Chronic non-bacterial osteomyelitis (CNO) is an inflammatory, non-infectious disorder of the skeletal system with unknown etiology. Besides bone-inflammation, patients may present with inflammatory involvement of other tissues. Chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis (CRMO) is the most severe form of CNO. We describe the occurrence of Crohn’s disease (CD) in four patients, previously diagnosed with CRMO. Mutations in CARD15, encoding the NOD2 protein, have recently been found in patients with CD. Based on the occurence of CNO and CD in these four and several reported patients, we hypothesized that CD and CRMO might share a common autoinflammatory process. Thus, we searched for CD associated CARD15 gene variants R702W, G908R and 1007fs in 29 CNO patients, 4 of them additionally diagnosed with CD. In the latter one out of the four showed compound heterozygosity for the gene variants R702W and 1007fs. The allele frequency in the 25 patients diagnosed with CNO but not CD was not different from that already reported in healthy people (R702W 4.0%, G908R 2.0%, 1007fs 2.0%). The occurrence of non-bacterial bone inflammation and granulomatous intestinal inflammation seems to represent an extended phenotype of CD, which partly might be explained by potential disease causing mutations in CARD15. However, CNO without intestinal inflammation is not associated with common CARD15 gene variants. Therefore, other variants of genes coding for proteins involved in innate immunity and inflammation might predispose for the occurrence of CNO.