The case presented was a 6-year-old female admitted with painful red bumps in her mouth. Tongue was swollen and she had thick white plaque-like lesions in her mouth. A culture grew candida and a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease was made after endoscopy. Patient did not present with gastrointestinal symptoms.
Clinical question: Do studies show a relationship between candida and Crohn’s in a young patient?
The following general search was performed in Ovid Medline:
1 Crohn Disease/ (24359)
2 exp candida/ (28900)
3 1 and 2 (24)
4 exp Mouth/ (200349)
5 tongue/ (12614)
6 4 or 5 (212963)
7 3 and 6 (3)

Search Strategy: Using the MeSH (medical subject headings), I combined Crohn Disease (notice the official term is singular) with candida. I also “exploded” candida to include all of the more specific organisms. You can always see what exploding will include by clicking on the link for the term you are searching in Ovid. Exploding allows your search to cast a wider net. This combination only retrieved 24 articles. This review article from Current Opinion in Gastroenterology looked like it contained a good discussion:

Pathogenic agents in inflammatory bowel diseases

Adding the terms ‘mouth’ or tongue’ to our search narrowed the results down to just 3 articles, but none looked helpful. However, another study from the original 24 retrieved that focused on the immunological basis for developing candida in Crohn’s disease patients looked interesting:

Candida albicans Colonization and ASCA in Familial Crohn ’ s Disease