Inflammatory bowel disease

Health supervision in the management of children and adolescents with IBD: NASPGHAN recommendations

Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn disease (CD), collectively referred to as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), are chronic inflammatory disorders that can affect the gastrointestinal tract of children and adults. Like other autoimmune processes, the cause(s) of these disorders remain unknown but likely involves some interplay between genetic vulnerability and environmental factors. Children, in particular with UC or CD, can present to their primary care providers with similar symptoms, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, weight loss, and bloody stool. Although UC and CD are more predominant in adults, epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that a significant percentage of these patients were diagnosed during childhood. The chronic nature of the inflammatory process observed in these children and the waxing and waning nature of their clinical symptoms can be especially disruptive to their physical, social, and academic development. As such, physicians caring for children must consider these diseases when evaluating patients with compatible symptoms. Recent research efforts have made available a variety of more specific and effective pharmacologic agents and improved endoscopic and radiologic assessment tools to assist clinicians in the diagnosis and interval assessment of their patients with IBD; however, as the level of complexity of these interventions has increased, so too has the need for practitioners to become familiar with a wider array of treatments and the risks and benefits of particular diagnostic testing. Nonetheless, in most cases, and especially when frequent visits to subspecialty referral centers are not geographically feasible, primary care providers can be active participants in the management of their pediatric patients with IBD. The goal of this article is to educate and assist pediatricians and adult gastroenterology physicians caring for children with IBD, and in doing so, help to develop more collaborative care plans between primary care and subspecialty providers.

Changes in immunohistochemical levels and subcellular localization after therapy and correlation and colocalization with CD68 suggest a pathogenetic role of Hsp60 in ulcerative colitis

In an earlier work, the role of heat shock protein (Hsp60) in the pathogenesis of ulcerative colitis (UC) was suggested by its significant increase in the pathological mucosa parallel with an increase in inflammatory cells. More data in this direction are reported in this work. We analyzed by immunohistochemistry biopsies of colon tissue from 2 groups of patients with UC and treated with either 5-aminosalicylic acid (5-ASA) alone or in combination with a probiotic. We looked for inflammatory markers and Hsp60. Both the treatments were effective in reducing symptoms but the group treated with both 5-ASA and probiotics showed better clinical results. Amelioration of symptoms was associated with reduction of both inflammation and Hsp60, a reduction that was most marked in the group treated with 5-ASA and probiotics. The levels of Hsp60 positively correlated with those of CD68-positive cells, and double immunofluorescence showed a high index of colocalization of the chaperonin and CD68 in lamina propria. Immunoelectron microscopy showed that Hsp60-classically a mitochondrial protein-was abundantly also present in cytosol in biopsies taken at the time of diagnosis, but not after the treatment. Our data suggest that Hsp60 is an active player in pathogenesis of UC and it can be hypothesized that the chaperonin is responsible, at least in part, for initiation and maintenance of disease.

Hsp10, Hsp70, and Hsp90 immunohistochemical levels change in ulcerative colitis after therapy

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) characterized by damage of large bowel mucosa and frequent extra-intestinal autoimmune comorbidities. The role played in IBD pathogenesis by molecular chaperones known to interact with components of the immune system involved in inflammation is unclear. We previously demonstrated that mucosal Hsp60 decreases in UC patients treated with conventional therapies (mesalazine, probiotics), suggesting that this chaperonin could be a reliable biomarker useful for monitoring response to treatment, and that it might play a role in pathogenesis. In the present work we investigated three other heat shock protein/molecular chaperones: Hsp10, Hsp70, and Hsp90. We found that the levels of these proteins are increased in UC patients at the time of diagnosis and decrease after therapy, supporting the notion that these proteins deserve attention in the study of the mechanisms that promote the development and maintenance of IBD, and as biomarkers of this disease (e.g., to monitor response to treatment at the histological level).

Impact of inflammatory bowel disease and high-dose steroid exposure on pupillary responses to negative information in pediatric depression

OBJECTIVE

To better understand emotional information processing in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and its relationship with depression. Pediatric IBD is associated with higher rates of depression than seen in other physical diseases and in community samples. In systemic inflammation, proinflammatory cytokines have been implicated in altering activity in brain regions known to affect emotion processing and emotion regulation in depression.

METHODS

We examined differences in pupillary responses as a marker of brain function in response to negative emotional information in youths (ages, 8-17 years) with IBD both with (n = 8) and without (n = 15) comorbid depression and who were receiving high-dose steroid treatment. We compared their responses to each other and to depressed youths without IBD (n = 20) and healthy youths (n = 22).

RESULTS

Youths with IBD demonstrated greater pupillary responses to the initial presentation of negative emotional stimuli, regardless of their depression status (p = .05). In contrast, depressed youths, regardless of their IBD status, demonstrated a greater constriction of the pupil 10 seconds to 12 seconds after exposure to negative stimuli. This constriction was associated with greater depressive severity and lower albumin levels.

CONCLUSIONS

IBD may be associated with increased sensitivity to negative emotional stimuli above and beyond depression diagnosis. Depressed youths potentially demonstrate affective blunting, emotional avoidance, or a failure to regulate emotion after exposure to negative emotional information. Thus, there seem to be unique contributions of medical disease and depression to physiological indications of emotional reactivity, but these factors do not seem to interact.