Future clinical applications of bile analysis

Abstract

Global Health Commission, 9 in exploring the health effects of climate change, called for an integrated and multidisciplinary approach to reduce the adverse health effects at three levels: develop policies to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon biosequestration, take action on events linking climate change to disease and establish appropriate public health systems to deal with these adverse outcomes. The Commission considered six drivers that link climate change to health. These include: changing patterns of disease and mortality like the effect climate change may have on vector-borne and rodent-borne diseases; extreme events such as natural disasters caused by flooding, droughts and wind storms; the threat to security of food; the effects on safe and reliable aspects to water and sanitation; the vulnerability of shelter and human settlements; and the impact on population and migration. Carbon emissions and your researchIt will be a tough call for individuals to sacrifice their freedom and lifestyle choices for the better good of global health, without governments uniting in supporting the Copenhagen Accord. Our enthusiasm for clinical research should not be dampened by these global concerns, but instead, we should consider methodologies that reduce commuting and travel, and that are carbon friendly.

Bile as a liquid biopsy matrix: potential applications and limitations

“…Bile culture and targeted antibiotic testing [16,45] Differential diagnosis of patients with jaundice [65] Early biliopancreatic cancer diagnosis [9] Diagnosis of indeterminate biliary strictures [10,20] Clinical conditions of patients with choledocholithiasis or bile microlithiasis [66] Pharmacokinetic analyses and biliary excretion studies [67,68] Progression/severity of hepatobiliary diseases [28] Early detection of post-liver resection and transplantation failure [69] Regenerative medicine [70] However, different studies already support bile analysis as a valuable tool. Indeed, changes in bile composition have been correlated with clinical severity, disease progression, and final outcome in patients with different hepatobiliary diseases including choledochal cysts, extrahepatic portal venous obstruction, and infantile obstructive cholangiopathy [28].…”