Response to treatment is more important than disease severity at diagnosis for prediction of early relapse in new-onset paediatric Crohn's disease.

Background: Paediatric Crohn's disease is characteried by frequently relapsing disease which may lead to hospitalisations and complications.

Aim: To develop predictive models for early relapse following first remission.

Methods: The GROWTH CD prospective inception cohort was designed to predict risk for early disease relapse and poor outcomes.

Bead-beating artefacts in the Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio of the human stool metagenome.

We evaluated bead-beating cell-lysis in analysing the human stool metagenome, since this is a key step. We observed that two different bead-beating instruments from the same producer gave a three-fold difference in the Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio. This illustrates that bead-beating can have a major impact on downstream metagenome analyses.

Comparison of outcomes parameters for induction of remission in new onset pediatric Crohn's disease: evaluation of the porto IBD group "growth relapse and outcomes with therapy" (GROWTH CD) study.

Background: Robust evaluation of induction therapies using both clinical and inflammatory outcomes in pediatric Crohn's disease (CD) are sparse. We attempted to evaluate clinical, inflammatory, and composite outcomes of induction of remission therapies (normal C reactive protein [CRP] remission) in a large pediatric prospective multicenter study.

Methods: Patients enrolled at diagnosis into the growth relapse and outcomes with therapy in Crohn's disease study were evaluated for disease activity, CRP, and fecal calprotectin at 8, 12 and 52 weeks after starting treatment.

Rapid test for fecal calprotectin levels in children with Crohn disease.

Assessment of fecal calprotectin, a surrogate marker of mucosal inflammation, is a promising means to monitor therapeutic response in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease, especially if the result is readily available. We tested the performance of a novel calprotectin rapid test, Quantum Blue, versus the conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 134 stool samples from 56 pediatric patients with Crohn disease. The intraclass correlation coefficient analysis reflected good agreement (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.