Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are part of the exhaled breath that were proposed as non-invasive breath biomarkers via different human discharge products like saliva, breath, urine, blood, or tissues. Particularly, due to the non-invasive approach, VOCs were considered as potential biomarkers for non-invasive early cancer detection. We herein aimed to review the data over VOCs utility in digestive neoplasia as early diagnosis or monitoring biomarkers. A systematic literature search was done using MEDLINE via PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science Core Collection. We identified sixteen articles that were included in the final analysis. Based on the current knowledge, we cannot identify a single VOC as a specific non-invasive biomarker for digestive neoplasia. Several combinations of up to twelve VOCs seem promising for accurately detecting some neoplasia types. A combination of different VOCs breath expression are promising tools for digestive neoplasia screening.
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) have become a major focus for gastroenterologists worldwide, with the increasing incidence and complexity of cases, which pose therapeutic challenges. Currently available approaches fail in controlling the disease activity in a significant proportion of patients and some of the therapies are associated with significant adverse events. Although new molecules are on the horizon and treatment strategies have been optimized, novel therapeutic tools are much needed in IBD for patients who fail to attain control of the disease. Apheresis is now a common non-pharmacological therapeutic modality used in several pathologies, IBD also. In the current review, we summarize currently available evidence with respect to selective apheresis in IBD.
Celiac disease (CD) is a systemic, immune-mediated illness that primarily affects the small bowel. A few decades ago, in the era of Watson and Crosby capsules, we used to sample the small bowel without even looking at it. Nowadays, with the continuous developing field of digestive endoscopy, we can even see the duodenal villi up closely, allowing for an optical, real-time diagnosis of villous atrophy. Advanced endoscopic techniques such as magnification, chromoendoscopy (dye-based and digital), water immersion, confocal endomicroscopy, endocytoscopy, and optical coherence tomography (OCT) have been evaluated in CD with good results: good agreement with histology, allowing for targeted biopsies and a reduction in the number of biopsies needed for diagnosis. Moreover, with the growing use of open-access endoscopy in many parts of the world, endoscopy is now contributing to increasing the diagnostic rate of CD, by recognition of endoscopic markers in patients without clinical suspicion of this disease. This is however an observerdependent method; to overcome the endoscopists subjectiveness in assessing villous atrophy, in the last years, many papers have looked at means of computerized analysis of endoscopic images. Currently available data show that these automated, quantitative methods hold very promising for the future.
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