2017 · Journal of gastroenterology and hepatology · paywalled
Inflammatory bowel disease detection and monitoring by measuring biomarkers in non-invasively collected colorectal mucus
Loktionov et al.
The finding, in our words
Testing 58 IBD patients, 50 IBS patients, and 33 controls found that measuring calprotectin and eosinophil-derived neurotoxin (EDN) in self-collected colorectal mucus distinguishes these groups, P<0.05. This patient-centric, decentralised method successfully monitored disease activity at days 10, 20, and 30, though the authors note EDN performance requires further validation.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Non-invasive self-sampling of anal colorectal mucus following defecation provides a patient-acceptable alternative to traditional stool collection for diagnosing colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease. This emerging approach allows reliable measurement of diagnostic biomarkers to improve screening compliance.
This pilot study found that a self-administered anal swabbing technique for collecting colorectal mucus was rated as acceptable by 96% of participants and yielded samples suitable for cytology and protein analysis. The method successfully detected elevated mucin 2 levels in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, indicating its potential for non-invasive screening.
This review establishes that microsampling across blood, saliva, urine and stool matrices offers validated workflows and regulatory recognition for human biomonitoring comparable to conventional methods. It finds that these decentralised approaches enhance participant acceptability and enable screening in remote or low-resource settings.
Self-collected oral and stool samples revealed distinct microbiome compositions in patients with endometriosis compared to controls, with Fusobacterium enrichment specifically observed in oral samples from moderate to severe cases. These results support the feasibility of decentralised self-collection for non-invasive biomarker screening in reproductive health.
This study found that stool samples self-collected on cards showed high correlation and agreement with ethanol-fixed samples for metagenomic sequencing, with negligible differences in microbial diversity. The results support the use of stool cards as a cost-effective alternative for decentralised sampling in epidemiologic studies, despite minor variations in individual species abundance.