Assessment of Non-invasive Tools for Detecting Active Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Part of the success of the treatment of people living with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) depends on the information that the doctor can obtain from the different clinical tests. Some of these tests are invasive such as the colonoscopy but other such the fecal calprotectin test, which measures intestinal inflammation, are non-invasive and useful to evaluate the success of the treatments. Unfortunately, the results from the non-invasive tests are not always clear and need to be complete with invasive tests for the right diagnosis. The aim of this research is to test new stool markers for assisting the gastroenterologist to diagnose inflammatory bowel conditions including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) and to carefully monitoring the effects of medications on remission. We are using applications based on the use of mass spectrometry for identifying the proteins that are released by the host in the stools. We have identified more than 400 proteins in total. Based on informatics, we have been able to produce lists of unique stool proteins that can rapidly inform the doctor if the person has an IBD, whether it is a CD or an UC and, more importantly for the treatment, if the IBD is active or in remission. The purpose of this study is to validate these protein markers in a blind test, where the real diagnosis will only be revealed after the analysis of the samples. This study will bring a new power tool to assist the gastroenterologist in the treatment of people living with IBD.