A Noninvasive Test for Gut Inflammation

Good news!

"Today, people suspected of having inflammatory bowel disease are often required to undergo a colonoscopy, an invasive procedure performed under anesthesia. A new method developed ... may offer a noninvasive alternative: detecting inflammation in the intestines by analyzing a fecal sample. In the future, stool testing might facilitate the diagnosis of disorders such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and help monitor their course, as well as enable physicians to select the most appropriate therapy for each patient. ..."

From the abstract:

"...
Methods: In this prospective cohort study, we obtained biopsies and faecal-wash samples from patients with IBD and controls undergoing lower endoscopy. We performed RNAseq of biopsies and matching faecal-washes, and associated them with endoscopic and histological inflammation status. We also performed faecal mass-spectrometry proteomics on a subset of samples. We inferred cell compositions using computational deconvolution and used classification algorithms to identify informative genes.

Results: We analysed biopsies and faecal washes from 39 patients (20 IBD, 19 controls). Host faecal-transcriptome carried information that was distinct from biopsy RNAseq and faecal proteomics. Transcriptomics of faecal washes, yet not of biopsies, from patients with histological inflammation were significantly correlated to one another (p=5.3×10−12). Faecal-transcriptome had significantly higher statistical power in identifying histological inflammation compared with transctiptome of intestinal biopsies (150 genes with area under the curve >0.9 in faecal samples vs 10 genes in biopsy RNAseq). ... Faecal samples were enriched in inflammatory monocytes, regulatory T cells, natural killer-cells and innate lymphoid cells.

Conclusions: Faecal wash host transcriptome is a statistically powerful biomarker reflecting histological inflammation. Furthermore, it opens the way to identifying important correlates and therapeutic targets that may be obscured using biopsy transcriptomics."

A Noninvasive Test for Gut Inflammation - Life Sciences | Weizmann Wonder Wander - News, Features and Discoveries A new method of characterizing immune cells shed in the stool could facilitate diagnosis and improve treatment of inflammatory bowel disease

Host transcriptome signatures in human faecal-washes predict histological remission in patients with IBD (no public access, but article above has a link to the PDF file)

Expression of inflammatory genes (reddish-brown) in intestinal cells is evident in fecal samples (left) but not in samples obtained by biopsy (right)