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Research has shown that disrupting normal sleep patterns and working late-night shifts can lead to increased disease activity. Investigators at a single tertiary-care center prospectively studied 14 patients under age 21 who had a new diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) after colonoscopic exam. Their sleep patterns and expression of six genes associated with the central circadian clock were compared with those in 18 controls who had also undergone diagnostic colonoscopy but with normal findings on biopsy. Expression of the six genes was measured in both intestinal mucosa and serum and was significantly lower (by 3-fold to 66-fold) in both inflamed and noninflamed tissue of patients with IBD compared with controls. Similar disparit…