الفهرس 
Inflammatory Bowel DiseasesOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The differentiation between patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and those with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) needs in most of cases the use of invasive and expensive investigational techniques as endoscopic examination and histological analysis of biopsy specimens which are unpopular with patients.
The need for simple, non invasive diagnostic tools for differentiation is of great importance.
Faecal calprotectin is a sensitive marker for the detection of bowel inflammation. It is easy to measure, resistant to proteolysis, stable in stool for 7 days and not expensive.
The present study aimed to reveal the diagnostic value of faecal calprotectin in differentiating IBD from IBS.
This study was conducted on 20 patients with IBD; 10 patients with active IBD (8 UC patients and 2 CD patients) and 10 patients with inactive IBD (7 UC patients and 3 CD patients) versus 20 patients with IBS diagnosed according to Rome III criteria (10 IBS-D patients and 10 IBS-C patients) in addition to 10 healthy persons as control.
All patients were subjected to full history taking and clinical examination, routine laboratory investigations, ESR and CRP, stool culture and sensitivity, faecal calprotectin, atypical p-ANCA and ASCA for the IBD group, abdominal ultrasonography, colonoscopy and biopsy.
In this study, faecal calprotectin had a sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV of 100%, 95%, 95.24% and 100% respectively when measured at 8.1 mg/L or above in discriminating IBD from IBS patients, and these diagnostic values were higher than that of CRP at its best cut off value of 2.5 mg/L. However both faecal calprotectin and CRP showed a 100% diagnostic accuracy in discriminating active from inactive IBD at values of 25.5 mg/L and 5.5 mg/L respectively. Furthermore, faecal calprotectin correlated significantly with the TLC, PLT count, ESR, CRP and UC activity index.
In conclusion, faecal calprotectin appears to be a clinically useful marker in differentiating IBD from IBS, moreover it can be used as activity marker in IBD.