Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Pharmacol Ther. Feb 6, 2016; 7(1): 41-50
Published online Feb 6, 2016. doi: 10.4292/wjgpt.v7.i1.41
Emerging role of novel biomarkers in the diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease
Anet A Soubières, Andrew Poullis
Anet A Soubières, Andrew Poullis, Department of Gastroenterology, St George’s Hospital, University of London, London SW17 0QT, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Soubières AA wrote the paper; Poullis A supervised and reviewed the paper as senior author.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
Correspondence to: Dr. Anet A Soubières, Department of Gastroenterology, St George’s Hospital, University of London, Blackshaw Road, Tooting, London SW17 0QT, United Kingdom. anet.soubieres@gmail.com
Telephone: +44-208-7253811 Fax: +44-208-7253520
Received: April 28, 2015
Peer-review started: May 7, 2015
First decision: September 14, 2015
Revised: October 6, 2015
Accepted: November 10, 2015
Article in press: November 11, 2015
Published online: February 6, 2016
Processing time: 275 Days and 12.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: There is no gold standard test in the diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Physicians must take into account clinical, endoscopic, and radiologic as well as serologic and histologic evidence in order to correctly diagnose their patients. Endoscopic evaluation is not only expensive, but is uncomfortable for patients and not without significant risk such as perforation. The use of biomarkers to help in the diagnosis and sub classification of IBD is an expanding area. In this review we touch on those non-invasive markers currently in clinical use before focusing on those more novel tests, with the potential to be highly useful in both diagnosis and differentiation of IBD.