Micronutrient deficiencies in patients with gastrointestinal cancer: To treat or not to treat.

Nutrition supplements are widely used among patients with cancer. The general public perceives supplements as more natural anticancer and antitoxicity agents, and often supplements are used without the knowledge of the treating physician. In the clinical setting, there are concerns that supplements may decrease effectiveness of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy and, as a result, supplementation is avoided.

Clinical Features and Outcomes of Patients with Pancreaticobiliary Malignancies in Los Angeles County and Their Association with CA 19-9 Levels.

Unlabelled: Although CA 19-9 is a commonly used tumor marker in the management of PBMs, the literature describing outcomes in patients with PBMs who have undetectable or low (hereinafter "low") CA 19-9 levels remains scarce. In this study, we sought to compare clinical features and outcomes in patients with PBMs and low CA 19-9 levels to those with normal and elevated CA 19-9 levels.

Methods: We retrospectively collected data on patients with biopsy-confirmed PBMs and stratified patients into categories based on their CA 19-9 level at diagnosis.

Yield of Post-Acute Diverticulitis Colonoscopy for Ruling Out Colorectal Cancer.

Background And Aims: Colonoscopy is recommended post-acute diverticulitis (AD) to exclude underlying adenocarcinoma (CRC). However, post-AD colonoscopy utility remains controversial. We aimed to examine yield of post-AD colonoscopy in our majority-Hispanic patient population.

Functional brain rewiring and altered cortical stability in ulcerative colitis.

Despite recent advances, there is still a major need to better understand the interactions between brain function and chronic gut inflammation and its clinical implications. Alterations in executive function have previously been identified in several chronic inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel diseases. Inflammation-associated brain alterations can be captured by connectome analysis.

Altered brain structural connectivity in patients with longstanding gut inflammation is correlated with psychological symptoms and disease duration.

Objective: We aimed to identify differences in network properties of white matter microstructure between asymptomatic ulcerative colitis (UC) participants who had a history of chronic gut inflammation, healthy controls (HCs) and a disease control group without gut inflammation (irritable bowel syndrome; IBS).

Design: Diffusion weighted imaging was conducted in age and sex-matched participants with UC, IBS, and HCs (N = 74 each), together with measures of gastrointestinal and psychological symptom severity. Using streamline connectivity matrices and graph theory, we aimed to quantify group differences in brain network connectivity.