Systematic review: advice lines for patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

Objective: Advice lines for patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) have been introduced internationally. However, only a few publications have described the advice line service and evaluated the efficiency of it with many results presented as conference posters. A systematic synthesis of evidence is needed and the aim of this article was to systematically review the evidence of IBD advice lines.

Fecal calprotectin is a surrogate marker for endoscopic lesions in inflammatory bowel disease.

Background: Fecal calprotectin is a marker of inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Since mucosal healing has become a goal of treatment in IBD we examined how reliably calprotectin levels reflect mucosal disease activity.

Methods: In all, 126 IBD patients and 32 irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients needing colonoscopy delivered a sample of feces prior to the start of bowel cleansing.

Mucosal healing predicts sustained clinical remission in patients with early-stage Crohn's disease.

Background & Aims: Few prospective data are available to support the clinical relevance of mucosal healing in patients with Crohn's disease. This study examined whether complete healing, determined by endoscopy, predicts a better outcome in Crohn's disease.

Methods: One-hundred thirty-three newly diagnosed and treatment-naïve Crohn's disease patients were given either a combination of immunosuppressive therapy (azathioprine) and 3 infusions of infliximab or treatment with conventional corticosteroids.