Division of Digestive Surgery, Turku University Hospital and University of Turku, P.O. Box 52, 20521, Turku, Finland.
Cell Biology, Biosciences, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jul 24;13(1):11979. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-39066-w.
The diagnosis of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) may be challenging and their clinical course, characterized by relapses and spontaneous or drug-induced remissions, is difficult to predict. Novel prognostic biomarkers are needed. Keratin 7 (K7) is a cytoskeletal intermediate filament protein which is not normally expressed in the colonic epithelium. It was recently shown that K7 expression in the colonic epithelium is associated with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, the two main subtypes of IBD. Here we investigated IBD associated K7 neo-expression in different regions of colon and terminal ileum. The correlation of the K7 expression with the inflammatory activity of the epithelium was analyzed in each region. The prognostic value of K7 was estimated by comparing the clinical disease activity after 3 years with the K7 expression at the time of enrollment. Our data shows that the level of K7 expression in inflamed epithelium varies depending on the anatomical region and it is the most pronounced in ascending and descending colon, but it did not predict the severity of IBD for the following 3 years. These results warrant future studies focusing on the biological role of K7 in colon and its utilization as potential IBD biomarker.
炎症性肠病（IBD）的诊断可能具有挑战性，其临床病程以复发和自发性或药物诱导的缓解为特征，难以预测。需要新的预后生物标志物。角蛋白 7（K7）是一种细胞骨架中间丝蛋白，通常不在结肠上皮中表达。最近的研究表明，K7 在结肠上皮中的表达与溃疡性结肠炎和克罗恩病有关，这是 IBD 的两个主要亚型。在这里，我们研究了不同结肠和末端回肠区域的 IBD 相关 K7 新生表达。分析了每个区域上皮炎症活性与 K7 表达的相关性。通过比较入组时的 K7 表达和 3 年后的临床疾病活动来评估 K7 的预后价值。我们的数据表明，炎症上皮中 K7 的表达水平取决于解剖区域，在升结肠和降结肠中最为明显，但在接下来的 3 年内并不能预测 IBD 的严重程度。这些结果证明了未来研究 K7 在结肠中的生物学作用及其作为潜在 IBD 生物标志物的用途的必要性。
