Alghoul Zahra, Yang Chunhua, Merlin Didier
Digestive Diseases Research Group, Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
Department of Chemistry, College of Arts & Sciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
Biomedicines. 2022 Jun 24;10(7):1492. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10071492.
Diagnosis and prognosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)-a chronic inflammation that affects the gastrointestinal tract of patients-are challenging, as most clinical symptoms are not specific to IBD, and are often seen in other inflammatory diseases, such as intestinal infections, drug-induced colitis, and monogenic diseases. To date, there is no gold-standard test for monitoring IBD. Endoscopy and imaging are essential diagnostic tools that provide information about the disease's state, location, and severity. However, the invasive nature and high cost of endoscopy make it unsuitable for frequent monitoring of disease activity in IBD patients, and even when it is possible to replace endoscopy with imaging, high cost remains a concern. Laboratory testing of blood or feces has the advantage of being non-invasive, rapid, cost-effective, and standardizable. Although the specificity and accuracy of laboratory testing alone need to be improved, it is increasingly used to monitor disease activity or to diagnose suspected IBD cases in combination with endoscopy and/or imaging. The literature survey indicates a dearth of summarization of biomarkers for IBD testing. This review introduces currently available non-invasive biomarkers of clinical importance in laboratory testing for IBD, and discusses the trends and challenges in the IBD biomarker studies.
炎症性肠病（IBD）是一种影响患者胃肠道的慢性炎症，其诊断和预后颇具挑战性，因为大多数临床症状并非IBD所特有，在其他炎症性疾病中也较为常见，如肠道感染、药物性结肠炎和单基因疾病。迄今为止，尚无用于监测IBD的金标准检测方法。内镜检查和影像学检查是重要的诊断工具，可提供有关疾病状态、位置和严重程度的信息。然而，内镜检查的侵入性和高成本使其不适用于频繁监测IBD患者的疾病活动，即便能用影像学检查替代内镜检查，高成本仍是一个问题。血液或粪便的实验室检测具有非侵入性、快速、经济高效且可标准化的优点。尽管单独的实验室检测的特异性和准确性有待提高，但它越来越多地用于监测疾病活动或与内镜检查和/或影像学检查相结合来诊断疑似IBD病例。文献调查表明，缺乏对用于IBD检测的生物标志物的总结。本综述介绍了目前在IBD实验室检测中具有临床重要性的非侵入性生物标志物，并讨论了IBD生物标志物研究的趋势和挑战。
