AUTHOR=Chen Peng , Zhou Gaoshi , Lin Jingxia , Li Li , Zeng Zhirong , Chen Minhu , Zhang Shenghong 

TITLE=Serum Biomarkers for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Medicine

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.00123

DOI=10.3389/fmed.2020.00123

ISSN=2296-858X

ABSTRACT=Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is a chronic, inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract. As the novel therapeutic goal and biologicals are widely recognized, accurate assessment of disease and prediction of therapeutic response have become a crucial challenge in clinical practice. Also, because of the continuously rising incidence, convenient and economical methods of diagnosis and clinical assessment is urgently needed. Recently, serum biomarkers have made a great progress and become a focus in IBD study since they are non-invasive, convenient, and relatively inexpensive compared to using markers in biopsy tissue, stool, breath, and other body fluids.
Aims: To review the available data on serological biomarkers for IBD.
Methods: We searched PubMed using pre-defined key words on relevant literatures of serum biomarkers regarding diagnosis, evaluation of therapeutic efficacy, surveillance of disease activity, and assessment of prognosis for IBD.
Results: We reviewed serological biomarkers that are well-established and widely-used (e.g., C-reactive protein), newly discovered biomarkers (e.g., cytokines, antibodies, non-coding RNAs), and also recently advance in serological biomarkers (e.g., metabolomics, proteomics) that are used in different aspects of IBD management.
Conclusions: With such a wealth of researches, there is still no ideal serum biomarkers for IBD to date. Serum profiling and non-coding RNAs are just started to blossom but reveal great promise for future clinical practice. Combining different biomarkers can be valuable in improving performance of disease evaluation.