VSL#3 probiotic upregulates intestinal mucosal alkaline sphingomyelinase and reduces inflammation.

Background: Alkaline sphingomyelinase, an enzyme found exclusively in bile and the intestinal brush border, hydrolyzes sphingomyelin into ceramide, sphingosine and sphingosine-1-phosphate, thereby inducing epithelial apoptosis. Reduced levels of alkaline sphingomyelinase have been found in premalignant and malignant intestinal epithelia and in ulcerative colitis tissue. Probiotic bacteria can be a source of sphingomyelinase.

Clinical experience with infliximab for Crohn's disease: the first 100 patients in Edmonton, Alberta.

Objective: To determine whether the clinical efficacy and safety of infliximab in diverse clinical referral practices was similar to that seen in the randomized, controlled clinical trials.

Methods: Data were gathered from a review of charts of 109 consecutive patients with inflammatory and/or fistulizing Crohn's disease who received infliximab infusions. Responses were recorded based on the physician's global clinical assessment and classified as complete, partial or nonresponse.

Conservative management of small adenomata in ulcerative colitis.

Objective And Methods: Patients with chronic ulcerative colitis may develop colitis-related dysplasia and/or sporadic adenomata. Differentiating between these two processes is important because they may dictate different therapeutic approaches. Although distinguishing features of sporadic adenomata versus colitis-related dysplasia have been suggested previously on an a priori basis, they have never been verified by follow-up analysis.

Characterization of chromosomal DNA profiles from Helicobacter pylori strains isolated from sequential gastric biopsy specimens.

The restriction endonuclease profiles of DNAs from Helicobacter pylori strains isolated from 20 patients in two or more consecutive biopsy specimens over a period of up to 2 years were analyzed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis with NotI and NruI. H. pylori strains possess a high degree of genomic diversity which was not observed to occur in vivo, and attempts to observe it in vitro were not successful.