Diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease: Potential role of molecular biometrics

Core Tip

Core tip: Pouch surgery (the restorative proctocolectomy and ileal pouch-anal anastomosis for the curative surgical treatment of ulcerative colitis and familial adenomatous polyposis) replaces the colon and rectum after proctocolectomy with a pouch constructed from the distal small bowel (ileum) and sutured to the anal canal above the dentate/pectinate line preserving the anal sphincters. The operation restores gut continuity, defecation, deferral, and discrimination, if the diagnosis is correct, which is unpredictable in 30% of the colonic-inflammatory bowel disease-patients. Mass spectrometry and imaging mass spectrometry are groundbreaking, non-invasive analytical technologies with the ability to directly measure individual molecular species in complex clinical specimens. These technologies provide quantitative and qualitative analysis of cellular systems, and allow differentiation between disease and normal molecules from the same organ. These characteristics offer diagnostic and prognostic value for clinical medicine.