ORGENTEC Autoimmunity Blog

Covering Autoimmune Diseases

Tag: inflammatory bowel disease

Biomarkers for disease activity in Crohn’s disease

May measuring of fecal calprotectin replace colonoscopy for follow up of patients with Crohn’s disease after surgery?

After intestinal resection patients with Crohn’s disease need close monitoring and tailored therapy adjustment to reduce the risk of relapses. Today, colonoscopy is still the gold standard for the detection of disease reactivation, an invasive procedure which is unpleasant for the patient and expensive for the health care systems.

Crohn's Disease

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Biomarkers in blood or stool samples that correlate with endoscopic findings could therefor improve the surveillance of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases.

A candidate marker for this purpose is measurement of calprotectin concentrations in stool samples from affected patients.

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Calprotectin for discriminiation of functional and organic bowel disease

Silhouette junges Mannes mit Magen-Darm-TraktDifferential diagnosis of bowel diseases can be challenging, because most of them present with similar common symptoms: abdominal pain and discomfort, diarrhea, weight loss. Infections by common gastrointestinal pathogens may soon be identified, but discrimination of inflammatory bowel disease, of which ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are the most common, and irritable bowel syndrome, remains difficult.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterised by inflammation of the bowel, which is not seen in most patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and both conditions request different diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. IBD are serious diseases with severe comorbidities, and affected patients need further investigation with extensive diagnostic measures and intensive medical treatment. In contrast to that, IBS may be painful and impairs quality of life, but it does not usually cause serious morbidity. However, patients with IBS can have symptoms for many years and they often experience unnecessary and stressing diagnostic procedures.

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