Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infects approximately 50% of the global population, with a wide variation between regions and countries. Prevalence is highest in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but lowest in Northern Europe and Northern America, preciselly the regions with a highest prevalence of EoE. Therefore, an inverse association between… Read More
Schlag C, Miehlke S, Heiseke A et al. Peripheral blood eosinophils and other non-invasive biomarkers can monitor treatment response in eosinophilic esophagitis. Aliment Pharmacol Ther 2015;42(9):1122-30.
Non or minimally invasive methods for monitoring the treatment response in EoE are largely desired, but at the moment only structured endoscopical and histological examination of the oesophagus provides accurate and reliable assessment.
Blood and serum samples from adult EoE patients participating in a randomized controlled trial with topic budesonide were compared before and after achieving disease remission in order to identify changes in potencial peripheral markers of the disease. Absolute blood eosinophil count, serum-CCL-17, eotaxin-3, eosinophil cationic protein and mast cell tryptase all dignificantly decrease in EoE patients after budesonide but not in those under placebo.
Absolute blood eosinophil count significantly correlated with esophageal eosinophil density before (Sperman rho = 0.28) and after (Spearman rho = 0.42) treatment, but ROC-AUC showed a moderate diagnostic yield (0.754; 95% CI: 0.617-0.891). A cut-off point of 300 eos/mm3 provided a sensitivity of 88% but a suboptimal specificity of only 56%.
According to the authors, this research cannot draw conclusions whether these biomarkers can be used for diagnostic purposes in EoE patients, but suggests that a decrease of the number of peripheral blood eosinophils could indicate a successful treatment
response to topical corticosteroid therapy in EoE.
More information at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26314389
