World journal of gastroenterology : WJG
-
World J. Gastroenterol. · Apr 2019
Observational StudyPerformance of tacrolimus in hospitalized patients with steroid-refractory acute severe ulcerative colitis.
Acute severe ulcerative colitis unresponsive to systemic steroid treatment is a life-threatening medical condition requiring hospitalization and often colectomy. Despite the increasing choice of medical therapy options for ulcerative colitis, the condition remains a great challenge in the field of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). The performance of the calcineurin inhibitor tacrolimus in this clinical setting is insufficiently elucidated. ⋯ The short-term outcome of tacrolimus in steroid-refractory acute severe ulcerative colitis was beneficial, and side effects were rare. In all, tacrolimus therapy appears to be a viable option for short-term treatment of steroid-refractory acute severe ulcerative colitis besides ciclosporin and anti-tumor necrosis factor α treatment.
-
World J. Gastroenterol. · Apr 2019
Plasma microRNAs as potential new biomarkers for early detection of early gastric cancer.
Early gastric cancer (EGC), compared with advanced gastric cancer (AGC), has a higher 5-year survival rate. However, due to the lack of typical symptoms and the difficulty in diagnosing EGC, no effective biomarkers exist for the detection of EGC, and gastroscopy is the only detection method. ⋯ The differentially expressed circulatory plasma miR-425-5p, miR-1180-3p, miR-122-5p, miR-24-3p and miR-4632-5p can be regarded as a new potential biomarker panel for the diagnosis of EGC. The prediction and early diagnosis of EGC can be considerably facilitated by combining gastroscopy with the use of these miRNA biomarkers, thereby optimizing the strategy for effective detection of EGC. Nevertheless, larger-scale human experiments are still required to confirm our findings.