Crohn disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease, affecting approximately 1 million people in the US. The severity of the symptoms and the frequency with which they recur varies widely among patients. Kenneth Smith and colleagues, at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, have now identified a gene expression profile that can divide patients with CD and UC into two otherwise undistinguishable subgroups -- those with a high incidence of treatment-nonresponsive, frequently relapsing, or chronically active disease and those with mild disease. As discussed by the authors and, in an accompanying commentary, Laurence Turka, Simon Robson, and David Friedman, these data should allow physicians to identify those patients that require aggressive therapies such as potent immune system–suppressing drugs and prevent those that do not need such drugs from being exposed to their rare but potentially life-threatening side effects.
TITLE: Gene expression profiling of CD8+ T cells predicts prognosis in patients with Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Kenneth G.C. Smith
University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Phone: 44.1223.336848; Fax: 44.1223.336846; E-mail: kgcs2@cam.ac.uk .
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/59255?key=e497ac519765f9202fce
ACCOMPANYING COMMENTARY
TITLE: There's a goat behind door number 3: from Monty Hall to medicine
AUTHOR CONTACT:
Laurence A. Turka
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
E-mail: lturka@bidmc.harvard.edu .
Simon C. Robson
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
E-mail: srobson@bidmc.harvard.edu .
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/60003?key=1ba64f03b4752af0b325
Journal of Clinical Investigation