الفهرس 
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Abstract
IBD is characterized by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and is considered a disease of activity and remission. The most common forms are ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Diagnosing IBD requires a combination of clinical findings, laboratory markers, imaging findings, and endoscopic biopsies. Lipocalin 2, the coding gene for NGAL, is one of the most over-expressed genes in the colonic mucosa in UC and CD compared with healthy individuals.It was found that NGAL has many functions like preventing growth of bacteria, homing of neutrophils to sites of acute inflammation, a chemo attractant for neutrophils and as an inhibitor of cellular oxidative stress. In this study we investigated the utility of serum NGAL in assessing the activity of IBD. 88 subjects (60 patients and 28 healthy controls) were included in the study. Patients with IBD either UC or CD. We detected no statistically significant difference between the three groups as regards age, sex, smoking status, and presence of comorbidities while there was statistically significant difference between the three groups as regards occupation, residence, and serum NGAL levels. Statistically significantly higher proportions of rural residence and unemployed in the two IBD groups vs. control group but not between the two IBD groups. Serum NGAL was statistically significantly higher in active IBD > remittent IBD > control group.We showed that serum NGAL is perfect in discriminating active IBD vs. control at cutoff value > 18.5 ng/ml. It is also statistically significant discriminator between active vs. remittent IBD at cutoff value > 26.7 ng/ml and remittent IBD vs. control group at cutoff value > 14.9 ng/ml. It also shows that fecal calprotectin is a statistically significant discriminator between active vs. remittent IBD at cutoff value > 154 mg/kg.