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World J Gastroenterol. Mar 28, 2022; 28(12): 1220-1225
Published online Mar 28, 2022. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i12.1220
Emerging role of colorectal mucus in gastroenterology diagnostics
Hesam Ahmadi Nooredinvand, Andrew Poullis
Hesam Ahmadi Nooredinvand, Andrew Poullis, Department of Gastroenterology, St George's Hospital, London SW17 0QT, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Nooredinvand HA drafted the manuscript; Poullis A proofread and revised the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Andrew Poullis, BSc, FRCP, MBBS, MD, Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, St George's Hospital, Blackshaw Road, Tooting, London SW17 0QT, United Kingdom. andrew.poullis@stgeorges.nhs.uk
Received: March 20, 2021
Peer-review started: March 20, 2021
First decision: June 14, 2021
Revised: July 29, 2021
Accepted: February 23, 2022
Article in press: February 23, 2022
Published online: March 28, 2022
Processing time: 369 Days and 11.4 Hours
Abstract

Colonoscopy is currently the gold standard for diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and colorectal cancer (CRC). This has the obvious drawback of being invasive as well as carrying a small risk. The most widely used non-invasive approaches include the use of faecal calprotectin in the case of IBD and fecal immunochemical test in the case of CRC. However, the necessity of stool collection limits their acceptability for some patients. Over the recent years, there has been emerging data looking at the role of non-invasively obtained colorectal mucus as a screening and diagnostic tool in IBD and CRC. It has been shown that the mucus rich material obtained by self-sampling of anal surface following defecation, can be used to measure various biomarkers that can aid in diagnosis of these conditions.

Keywords: Colorectal mucus; Inflammatory bowel disease; Crohn's disease; Ulcerative colitis; Colorectal cancer; Faecal calprotectin

Core Tip: We now know that non-invasively collected colorectal mucus contains diagnostically informative cells that can be analysed to look for various biomarkers. The presence of some of these biomarkers have the potential role in diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer. This is an exciting field that we believe is worth exploring further.