Clinical Significance of Serum Cholinesterase in the Diagnosis and Assessment of Clinical Activity in Patients with IBD

Abstract Background Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative colitis, witnessed dramatic rise in incidence in the past few decades. Fecal calprotectin has been widely established as laboratory marker in assessment, diagnosis and severity of IBD. It showed low specificity and high number of false positive results. Cholinesterase (ChE) enzymatic glycoprotein used in hydrolosis of acetylcholine, showed significant correlation with IBD activity, it showed also potential role in diagnosis and assessing clinical severity in IBD patients. We will evaluate the role of serum cholinesterase in diagnosis and assessment of severity in IBD patients. Aim of the Work The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of serum cholinesterase (ChE) in diagnosis and assessment of activity in IBD patients Patients and Methods A Case control study in outpatients and inpatients in departments of Internal Medicine, Ain Shams University Hospital for Six months since beginning of data collection (till fulfilling the sample size) on 70 subjects divided into 3 groups: Group A: 25 patients with Crohn’s disease evidenced by colonoscopy and tissue biopsy, group B: 25 patients with Ulcerative Colitis disease evidenced by colonoscopy and tissue biopsy, group C: 20 age-matched, sex-matched healthy controls Results Our results confirmed that, compared with healthy controls, serum ChE levels were decreased in patients with IBD, and the decline in serum ChE levels was more pronounced as clinical activity in IBD increased. We also found that the serum ChE levels of patients with CD and those with UC were significantly different. It needs to be further clarified the relationship between serum ChE and endoscopic activity in the future. Conclusion Serum ChE levels can be used as a simple, economical method to help diagnose and distinguish the different stages of IBD. With the increasing biomedical research on the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway and ChE, serum ChE is expected to become a new immunotherapy target for IBD.