Mucosal healing (MH) has become a major target in the management of ulcerative colitis (UC). Because repeat endoscopy is expensive and invasive, we aimed to evaluate fecal calprotectin (FC) as an alternative marker to predict MH in UC. Eighty patients with UC in clinical remission were consecutively included in a prospective observational study. FC was measured using a quantitative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The colonic mucosa was assessed for endoscopic and histological measures of inflammatory status. Endoscopic and histological remission were defined according to the Mayo endoscopic subscore (MES) and Geboes score (GS), respectively. Deep remission was defined as a combination of the MES and GS. FC performance and cutoff values for identifying MH and deep remission were determined using contingency tables and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) and area under the curve (AUC) analysis. The median FC concentration in patients who met the criteria for deep remission (MES ≤1 and GS < 3.1) was 65.5 μg/g, while that in patients with disease activity was 389.6 μg/g (P = .025). A FC cutoff value of 100 μg/g, determined by the ROC analysis, resulted in sensitivity and specificity of 91.7% and 57.1%, respectively, for histological remission, and 82.4% and 60.9%, respectively, for deep mucosal remission. Positive correlations were detected between FC concentrations with the histologic (CC: 0.435; P < .001) and the combined endoscopic and histologic (CC: 0.413; P < .001) scores. FC can be used confidently as a noninvasive biomarker to predict deep remission in patients with UC in clinical remission when concentrations are below 100 μg/g.

The prevalence of TPMT genotypes was high among Brazilian patients. Variants genes 2 and 3C may be associated with azathioprine pancreatic toxicity in a IBD southeastern Brazilian population.

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Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic transmural disease process with approximately 10% of patients developing spontaneous intra-abdominal abscess during the first 5 years after the diagnosis. The symptoms are often nonspecific. The treatment modalities include the use of wide-spectrum antibiotics, imaging-guided percutaneous drainage (PD) and surgical drainage with or without resection. The best initial treatment strategy has not been settled controversial, as there are only retrospective studies with small sample sizes available in the literature. The majority of the patients would eventually need surgery. However a highly selected patient population with small abscess in the absence of fistulas or bowel strictures, especially those naive to immunomodulators or biologics, may respond to medical treatment alone with wide-spectrum antibiotics. The increased use of PD drainage in the last few years has been shown to reduce postoperative morbidities and risk of fecal diversion, allowing for subsequent elective surgery. Varied success rates of PD drainage have been reported in the literature. The initial surgical intervention of CD-related spontaneous abdominal sepsis is mandatory in patients with diffuse peritonitis due to free perforation. Surgery is also indicated in those with failed initial medical treatment and/or PD. This review article was aimed to evaluate the treatment modalities for spontaneous intra-abdominal abscess in CD patients and propose an algorithm for the best management of this complication.

Background and Aims. Magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) has become an important modality of radiological imaging in the evaluation of Crohn’s disease (CD). The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of MRE in the assessment of disease activity and abdominal complications and in the making of therapeutic decisions for patients with CD. Methods. In a cross-sectional retrospective study, we selected 74 patients with CD who underwent MRE and ileocolonoscopy with an interval between the two exams of up to 30 days between January 2011 and December 2017. We assessed the parameters of the images obtained by MRE and investigated the agreement with the level of disease activity and complications determined by a clinical evaluation, inflammatory biomarkers, and endoscopy, as well as the resulting changes in medical and surgical management. Results. Changes in medical management were detected in 41.9% of patients. Significant changes in medical decisions were observed in individuals with a purely penetrating (P=.012) or a mixed (P=.024) MRE pattern. Patients with normal MRE patterns had a correlation with unchanged medical decisions (P=.001). There were statistically significant agreements between the absence of inflammatory criteria on MRE and remission according to the Harvey and Bradshaw index (HBI) (P=.037), the presence of inflammatory criteria on MRE and positive results for calprotectin (P=.005), and penetrating criteria on MRE and the scoring endoscopic system for Crohn’s disease (SES-CD), indicating active disease (P=.048). Finally, there was significant agreement between the presence of fibrostenotic criteria and a long disease duration (P=.027). Conclusion. MRE discloses disease activity and complications not apparent with other modalities and results in changes in therapeutic decisions. In addition to being used for diagnosis, MRE should be routinely used in the follow-up of CD patients.