The Impact of Concomitant Hypothyroid Disease on the Course of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic, immune-mediated inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract. In IBD, systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation may also impact extraintestinal organs, such as the thyroid gland. Despite this, little is known about the influence of concomitant hypothyroidism on the clinical course of IBD.

Elevated serum globulin fraction as a biomarker of multiyear disease severity in inflammatory bowel disease.

Background: Serum protein reflects albumin and globulin levels, both of which can be altered in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The implications of a high globulin fraction in IBD are unknown. We hypothesized that a high globulin fraction may function independently of albumin as a biomarker of disease severity in IBD patients over a multiyear period.

A self-training teacher-student model with an automatic label grader for abdominal skeletal muscle segmentation.

Deep learning on a limited number of labels/annotations is a challenging task for medical imaging analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel self-training segmentation pipeline (Self-Seg in short) for segmenting skeletal muscle in CT images. Self-Seg starts with a small set of annotated images and then iteratively learns from unlabeled datasets to gradually improve the segmentation performance.

High Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption Is Associated with Increased Health Care Utilization in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Multiyear, Prospective Analysis.

Background: Dietary factors like sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption are known to influence disease course in a variety of illnesses; however, long-term outcomes are not well documented for inflammatory bowel disease.

Objective: Does high consumption of SSBs lead to high healthcare utilization (ie, hospitalizations and emergency department visits), inflammation, and disease severity in patients with inflammatory bowel disease?

Design: A prospective cohort study was conducted from 2015 to 2019. Patients enrolled in the discovery study cohort were followed for 3 years, whereas patients in the validation cohort were followed for 2 years.

Serum IgG4 Subclass Deficiency Defines a Distinct, Commonly Encountered, Severe Inflammatory Bowel Disease Subtype.

Background: Immunoglobulin G subclass 4 (IgG4) is hypothesized to play an immunomodulatory role, downregulating humoral immune responses. The role of this anti-inflammatory molecule in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has not been fully characterized. We sought to define alterations in serum IgG4 in patients with IBD and their association with multiyear disease severity.

The Impact of Cholecystectomy on Long-Term Disease Outcomes and Quality of Life in Patients with Crohn's Disease.

Background: Cholecystectomy (CCY) is one of the most frequently performed abdominal surgeries. However, the impact of CCY in clinical settings with altered gastrointestinal physiology and anatomy, such as Crohn's disease (CD), has not been fully characterized. We sought to investigate clinical outcomes, disease severity, and quality of life of CD patients after CCY.