MedWire News: A gene test can accurately and swiftly distinguish patients with inflammatory bowel disease from those with similar disorders, and could therefore improve diagnosis and management of the condition, say researchers.

“Gastrointestinal disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease can dramatically affect quality of life, and the diagnosis can be a challenging process,” explain Dr Petra von Stein, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues.

They add: “The picture is complicated further by the fact that other gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome can present symptoms very similar to inflammatory bowel disease, making the differentiation of irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease difficult.”

However, the team says that identifying genes that are ‘expressed’ differently in patients with inflammatory bowel disease and those with irritable bowel syndrome could improve “accuracy in diagnosis and prognosis… to enable the most appropriate choice of treatment”.

The team therefore studied colon tissue samples taken from patients with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis or irritable bowel syndrome.

Genetic analysis revealed that seven genes were expressed differently in tissue samples from the inflammatory bowel disease patients with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis than in those from patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

The team then applied the gene test to 301 patients with bowel disorders and found that it accurately and quickly distinguished patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis from those with irritable bowel syndrome.

Dr von Stein and team conclude: “Expression profiling of relevant marker genes in colonic biopsy specimens from patients with inflammatory bowel disease/irritable bowel syndrome-like symptoms may enable swift and reliable determination of diagnosis, ultimately improving disease management.”

They add: “The diagnostic method presented here could prove to be a useful addition to the current repertoire of clinical measures routinely employed in the classification of true inflammatory bowel disease cases, and also for early discrimination from the more prevalent non-inflammatory bowel disease cases. It would complement existing practices and could be adopted easily on a routine basis.”

The research is published in the journal Gastroenterology.