Serum biomarkers confirming stable remission in inflammatory bowel disease

• Published in: Scientific reports 2021-03, Vol.11 (1), p.6690-6690, Article 6690
• Main Authors: Kessel, Christoph, Lavric, Miha, Weinhage, Toni, Brueckner, Markus, de Roock, Sytze, Däbritz, Jan, Weber, Jakob, Vastert, Sebastiaan J., Foell, Dirk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 692/4020/1503/257; 692/53; 692/53/2422; Biomarkers; Chemokines; Crohn's disease; CXCL10 protein; CXCL11 protein; Disease control; Galectin-1; Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor; Humanities and Social Sciences; IL-1β; Inflammatory bowel disease; Inflammatory bowel diseases; Interleukin 1; Interleukin 1 receptor antagonist; Interleukin 1 receptors; Interleukin 13; Interleukin 15; Interleukin 21; Interleukin 8; Intestine; multidisciplinary; Remission; Remission (Medicine); Risk assessment; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Ulcerative colitis; β-Interferon
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-86251-w

Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) have a chronic-remittent course. Optimal management of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) relies on early intervention, treat-to-target strategies and a tight disease control. However, it is challenging to assess the risk of relapses in individual patients. We investigated blood-based biomarkers for the confirmation of disease remission in patients with IBD. We retrospectively analyzed samples of 40 IBD patients (30 UC, 10 CD) enrolled in a tight-control follow-up study. Half of the patients had a flare during follow up. Serum was analyzed for S100A12 as well as S100A8/A9 and for 50 further biomarkers in a bead-based multiplex assay. The concentrations of 9 cytokines/chemokines and S100A8/A9 significantly differed in IBD patients with unstable remission (before flares) when compared to IBD patients with stable remission. Although the number of patients was small, ROC curve analyses revealed a number of biomarkers (IL-1β, IL-1RA, IL-8, IL13, IL-15, IL-21, IL-25, IFN-β, CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCL11, Galectin-1, G-CSF and S100A8/A9) that were elevated in patients with later occurring relapses. While earlier studies on peripheral biomarkers in IBD are limited to only few analytes, our study using a broad screening approach identified serum biomarkers with the potential to indicate unstable disease control in IBD, which may help to steer individual therapies to maintain remission.