Published 2013. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2014, 111, 290-304.”
“Background:Mucosal healing (MH) is a vital early endpoint in management of Crohn’s disease (CD). MH depends on endoscopic assessment and there is increasing interest in non-invasive proxies, Pediatric Crohn’s Disease activity Index (PDCAI), C-reactive protein (CRP) and fecal calprotectin (FC). These proxies must be validated against endoscopic disease activity (SES-CD) at diagnosis and after induction therapy in well characterized cohorts of children with CD.Methods:A prospective cohort of 24 newly diagnosed

children ( smaller than 16 yr) with luminal CD quantifiable

on complete ileo-colonoscopy had paired PCDAI, CRP, FC and SES-CD at diagnosis and after 8 weeks therapy with exclusive enteral nutrition or steroids.Results:At selleck screening library diagnosis: PCDAI had poor correlation (r = 0.33); CRP (r = 0.54) and FC (r = 0.46) had moderate correlation with SES-CD. After induction therapy: 11/24 had inactive disease (SES-CD 0-2); PCDAI (r = 0.34) and CRP (0.28) had poor correlation with SES-CD, many children with SES-CD 3 having normalization of both PCDAI and CRP. FC had good correlation (r = 0.50) but many with SES-CD 0-2 had FC bigger than 200 g/gm stool. FC smaller than 500 (positive likelihood ratio, 3.2) and FC drop bigger than 50% (positive likelihood ratio, 3.8) had greater predictive value for inactive disease. Composite P5091 in vivo PCDAI ( smaller than 10), CRP ( smaller than 5 mg/dl) & FC smaller than 500 g had excellent Negative LR (0.2) predicting inactive disease.Conclusions:PCDAI is unreliable for endoscopic disease severity assessment. selleck Only FC correlates with endoscopic activity

after therapy but cut off smaller than 200 g is too high for defining endoscopic recovery in children. Composite normalized PCDAI, CRP and FC smaller than 500 g should be considered the non-invasive endpoint for treatment response in pediatric CD.”
“Communication between cells of the immune system and the organism is dependent on information processing mediated by proteins of the cell surface. The cell surface proteome consists of a group of functionally diverse proteins, which not only enables but also limits the interaction capacities of cells within their particular microenvironment. Although these proteins represent a highly important proteome for immunological research, most routinely used technologies for their detection only allow for a fragmented view of the ensemble of cell surface located proteins. A major bottleneck is the limited availability of high quality antibodies against cell surface protein targets that altogether impedes a Systems Biology view on the cell surface proteome (surfaceome) and its concerted functions during signal processing.