Teagan S Edwards ¹, Andrew S Day ¹

Expert Rev Mol Diagn.. 2024 Jun;24(6):497-508. doi: 10.1080/14737159.2024.2375224. Epub 2024 Jul 12.

Introduction: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), encompassing Crohn’s disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC), is a relapsing and remitting condition. Noninvasive biomarkers have an increasingly important role in the diagnosis of IBD and in the prediction of future disease course in individuals with IBD. Strategies for the management of IBD increasingly rely upon close monitoring of gastrointestinal inflammation.

Areas covered: This review provides an update on the current understanding of established and novel stool-based biomarkers in the diagnosis and management of IBD. It also highlights key gaps, identifies limitations, and advantages of current markers, and examines aspects that require further study and analysis.

Expert opinion: Current noninvasive inflammatory markers play an important role in the diagnosis and management of IBD; however, limitations exist. Future work is required to further characterize and validate current and novel markers of inflammation. In addition, it is essential to better understand the roles and characteristics of noninvasive markers to enable the appropriate selection to accurately determine the condition of the intestinal mucosa.

• Noninvasive inflammatory markers play an important role in diagnosis and management of IBD.
• Fecal inflammatory markers can reflect gut inflammation in IBD; however, they are not specific and various limitations must be considered.
• Although FCal is the most well-established and routinely used marker in IBD, it may have reduced sensitivity and specificity in some settings.
• Several emerging biomarkers including MPO have been assessed and show promise.
• Identification of effective and accurate noninvasive markers of inflammation may limit the need for repeat invasive endoscopic examinations in the future.

Ronen Sumagin ¹

Am J Pathol . 2024 Jan;194(1):2-12. doi: 10.1016/j.ajpath.2023.10.009. Epub 2023 Nov 2.

Neutrophils [polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs)] execute important effector functions protecting the host against invading pathogens. However, their activity in tissue can exacerbate inflammation and inflammation-associated tissue injury and tumorigenesis. Until recently, PMNs were considered to be short-lived, terminally differentiated phagocytes. However, this view is rapidly changing with the emerging evidence of increased PMN lifespan in tissues, PMN plasticity, and phenotypic heterogeneity. Specialized PMN subsets have been identified in inflammation and in developing tumors, consistent with both beneficial and detrimental functions of PMNs in these conditions. Because PMN and tumor-associated neutrophil activity and the resulting beneficial/detrimental impacts primarily occur after homing to inflamed tissue/tumors, studying the underlying mechanisms of PMN/tumor-associated neutrophil trafficking is of high interest and clinical relevance. This review summarizes some of the key findings from over a decade of work from my laboratory and others on the regulation of PMN recruitment and identification of phenotypically and functionally diverse PMN subtypes as they pertain to gut inflammation and colon cancer.

Shuai Ma ¹, Qingqing Xu ¹, Bo Deng ¹, Yin Zheng ², Hongyan Tian ¹, Li Wang ³, Feng Ding ⁴ , Intensive Care Med Exp. 2017 Dec;5(1):18.

This study showed that selective granulocyte and monocyte adsorption with cellulose acetate beads might ameliorate cecal ligation and puncture (CLP)-induced sepsis and improve survival and organ function.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5366986/pdf/40635_2017_Article_129.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28342161/