Clinical Significance of Faecal Calprotectin in Differentiating Inflammatory Bowel Disease from Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic idiopathic inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract with relapsing and remitting course. Recurrent abdominal pain and discomfort in association with abnormal defecation in the absence of structural abnormality of the gut is the key feature of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Faecal biomarker may be used a precise tool in the differentiation of IBD and IBS. The aim of this study was to measure faecal calprotectin (FC) in patients with IBD and IBS and compare between them. This was a cross-sectional study done in the department of Gastroenterology, BSMMU, Bangladesh from May 2017 to August 2018. IBD patients were diagnosed on the basis of compatible history, clinical examination, laboratory, radiological and endoscopic findings. IBS patients were selected by using the Rome IV criteria. Quantitative faecal calprotectin ELISA (BUHLMANN Quantum Blue) test was done and compared between IBD and IBS patients. In this study, ninety (90) patients were enrolled, 45 patients with IBD and 45 patients with IBS. Mean age of the IBD patients was 32.24±9.76 years and IBS patients was 33.80±9.70 years. There were 28(62.2%) male and 17(37.8%) female patients with IBD and 30(66.7%) male and 15(33.3%) female patients with IBS. We found faecal calprotectin (FC) level was 445.68±237.35μg/gm in IBD patients and 39.16±17.31μg/gm in IBS patients. There was a significant difference of faecal calprotectin level between IBD and IBS patients (p-value <0.001). The sensitivity and specificity of faecal calprotectin to differentiate IBD from IBS was 91.1% and 86.7% respectively. The test accuracy was 88.9%. Area under ROC was 0.959 (95% CI, 0.909 to 1.0). This study showed that faecal calprotectin appears to be clinically useful, non-invasive, rapid and reliable marker to differentiate IBD from IBS.