Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Pharmacol Ther. Aug 8, 2020; 11(3): 40-47
Published online Aug 8, 2020. doi: 10.4292/wjgpt.v11.i3.40
Shared changes in angiogenic factors across gastrointestinal vascular conditions: A pilot study
Atiyekeogbebe R Douglas, Grainne Holleran, Sinead M Smith, Deirdre McNamara
Atiyekeogbebe R Douglas, Grainne Holleran, Sinead M Smith, Deirdre McNamara, TAGG Research Centre, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin D24, Ireland
Author contributions: Douglas AR performed the experiments and wrote the manuscript; Holleran G participated in sample collection; Smith SM served as scientific advisor and was involved in analysis; McNamara D designed the study; corrected the manuscript and served as the guarantor.
Institutional review board statement: Full ethical approval was obtained from the Tallaght Hospital/St James’ Hospital Joint Research Ethics Committee.
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from all patients prior to inclusion.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors had any conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: No additional data.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
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: Atiyekeogbebe R Douglas, MSc, Research Scientist, TAGG Research Centre, Trinity Centre, Tallaght Hospital, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Tallaght, Dublin D24, Ireland. douglaar@tcd.ie
Received: January 4, 2020
Peer-review started: January 14, 2020
First decision: April 8, 2020
Revised: May 11, 2020
Accepted: July 18, 2020
Article in press: July 18, 2020
Published online: August 8, 2020
Processing time: 203 Days and 19.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: This is the first study to look at key angiogenic factors across several distinct intestinal vascular disorders. Our novel study suggests a common alteration in Angiopoietin 1 (Ang-1) levels, a vascular factor associated with vessel stabilization and maturation, across a variety of gastrointestinal vascular disorders. VEGF appears not to play a significant role in these conditions. Serum elevation in Ang-2 levels and lower than normal Ang-1 levels are associated with clinically significant disease and warrant further investigation as potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets. This offers a potential final common pathway which could be of use diagnostically and therapeutically across several vascular conditions.