This study demonstrates that prevalence of HBV and HCV infection in a large IBD cohort from Western Balkans is compared to that of the background population. IBD patients under immunosuppressants may apparently be treated with safety if preventive antiviral treatment is administered.

Considering epidemiological, genetic and immunological data, we can conclude that the inflammatory bowel diseases are heterogeneous disorders of multifactorial etiology in which hereditability and environment interact to produce the disease. It is probable that patients have a genetic predisposition for the development of the disease coupled with disturbances in immunoregulation. Several genes have been so far related to the diagnosis of Crohn's disease. Those genes are related to innate pattern recognition receptors, to epithelial barrier homeostasis and maintenance of epithelial barrier integrity, to autophagy and to lymphocyte differentiation. So far, the most strong and replicated associations with Crohn's disease have been done with NOD2, IL23R and ATG16L1 genes. Many genes have so far been implicated in prognosis of Crohn's disease and many attempts have been made to classify genetic profiles in Crohn's disease. CARD15 seems not only a susceptibility gene, but also a disease-modifier gene for Crohn's disease. Enriching our understanding on Crohn's disease genetics is important but when combining genetic data with functional data the outcome could be of major importance to clinicians.

Collagen Proportional Area (CPA) extraction using digital image analysis (DIA) in liver biopsies provides an effective way to estimate the liver disease staging. CPA represents accurately fibrosis expansion in liver tissue. This paper presents an automated clustering-based method for fibrosis detection and CPA computation. Initially, a k-means based approach is employed to detect the liver tissue and eliminate the background. Next, the method decides about the adequacy of current biopsy, according to the size of liver tissue. Biopsies which contain small and segmented specimens must be repeated. Since the tissue has been detected, fibrosis areas are also found in the tissue. Finally, CPA is computed. For the evaluation of the proposed method 25 images are employed and the percentage errors of CPA are computed for each image. In the majority of the cases, small variation of CPA is computed, comparing to the expert's annotation.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract comprising Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Although the pathogenesis of the disease is not clearly defined yet, environmental, genetic and other factors contribute to the onset of the disease. Apart from the clinical and histopathological findings, several serological biomarkers are also employed to detect IBD. One of the most thoroughly studied biomarker is anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA). We herein provide an overview of the current knowledge on the use of ANCA and certain ANCA proteins, such as bactericidal increasing protein, lactoferrin, cathepsin G and elastase, as serological markers for IBD and other diseases.

Concomitant diagnosis of Crohn's disease and juvenile or adult-onset idiopathic arthritis is rare. It is possible that both conditions share some genetic or immunological defects although sufficient data are lacking. We describe herein the first case of a patient with adult-onset Still's disease who was diagnosed on follow up with concomitant Crohn's disease. A 38-year-old man diagnosed with adult onset Still's disease from the age of 24 was admitted in our hospital because of bloody diarrhea. On admission physical examination was unremarkable and all routine laboratory tests were normal except of Hg at 11.3 gr/dl, erythrocyte sedimentation rate at 27 mm/h and C-reactive protein at 14 mg/dl. Ileocolonoscopy revealed small aphthoid ulcers in the terminal ileum and capsule endoscopy revealed the source of bleeding and small aphthoid ulcers starting from the distal jejunum up to the terminal ileum. Terminal ileum biopsies were diagnostic of Crohn's disease and patient had started on therapy with mesalamine 2 gr/day and azathioprine 2mg/kg and is currently on multidisciplinary follow up. We review all literature on co-existence of Crohn's disease with chronic idiopathic arthritis and we discuss the possible difficulties in diagnosis and therapy of those patients also in the view of the new biological agents.