Biomarkers in inflammatory bowel disease: current practices and recent advances

Abstract

Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis represent the two main forms of the idiopathic chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Currently available blood and stool based biomarkers provide reproducible, quantitative tools which can complement clinical assessment to aid clinicians in IBD diagnosis and management. C-reactive protein and fecal based leukocyte markers can help the clinician distinguish IBD from non-inflammatory diarrhea and assess disease activity. The ability to differentiate between forms of IBD and predict risk for disease complications is specific to serologic tests including antibodies against Saccharomyces cerevisiae and perinuclear antineutrophil cytoplasmic proteins. Advances in genomic, proteomic and metabolomic array based technologies are facilitating the development of new biomarkers for IBD. The discovery of novel biomarkers which can correlate with mucosal healing or predict long term disease course has the potential to significantly improve patient care. This article reviews the uses and limitations of currently available biomarkers and highlights recent advances in IBD biomarker discovery.

Soluble Syndecan-1: Does This Biomarker Address a Seemingly Insoluble Problem in Inflammatory Bowel Disease?

“…Yet, the use of these invasive diagnostic procedures can be limiting with regard to monitoring disease activity and assessing disease severity during the treatment, recovery, and remission phases of the disease. There is therefore a need to identify new specific disease biomarkers that do not rely on invasive investigations for diagnosis [5][6][7][8][9].…”

Fecal Lactoferrin, Fecal Calprotectin, Transforming growth factor-b1, and CRP in Evaluation of Disease Activity in Egyptian patients With Ulcerative colitis

“…It makes up about 5% of the total protein content in the neutrophil and about 60% of the cytosolic proteins (23). It is an important granulocyte cytosolic protein that is closely related to fecal excretion of 111-indium labeled leucocytes, deemed to be the gold standard for measuring intestinal inflammation (24).…”

Using Markers in IBD to Predict Disease and Treatment Outcomes: Rationale and a Review of Current Status

“…Although the utility of this test has decreased, it is still widely used. One factor is that, compared with CRP, ESR reaches the highest point less quickly, decreases at a slower rate, and also has a lesser degree of change ( 8 ). Th erefore, ESR determination satisfactorily monitors the acute-phase response of disease aft er the fi rst 24 h, whereas during the fi rst 24 h CRP is a better indicator of the acute-phase disease response.…”