[Possible role of mucosal lymphocyte homing in the pathogenesis of extraintestinal manifestations in inflammatory bowel diseases].

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease are likely to develop several extraintestinal complications including skin, eye, joint or liver disorders. Some of them tend to correlate with underlying bowel inflammation or may run a chronic independent course from the bowel disease. Tissue infiltration with lymphocytes seems to be the most prominent feature of extraintestinal manifestations. Recent reports have suggested that these lymphocytes are originally activated in the inflamed bowel and then aberrantly recruited to sites outside the gut. Furthermore the hypothesized existence of an enterohepatic circulation of lymphocytes could also contribute to the pathogenesis of liver complications.