Annual fecal occult-blood testing with rehydration of the samples decreased the 13-year cumulative mortality from colorectal cancer by 33 percent.

Calcium supplementation is associated with a significant - though moderate - reduction in the risk of recurrent colorectal adenomas.

Recognized manifestations of acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract include secretory diarrhea, abdominal pain, and, at times, hemorrhage. In a review of 469 patients undergoing allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) from matched sibling donors at our institution, we have recognized a syndrome of upper GI GVHD. This syndrome, presenting clinically as anorexia, dyspepsia, food intolerance, nausea, and vomiting, was recognized and confirmed histologically in 62 patients (13% by Kaplan-Meier projection) at the initiation of systemic GVHD therapy, a subset of the 197 patients developing grade II through IV GVHD. These 62 patients with upper GI GVHD were significantly older than the overall BMT population and older than the cohort with grade II through IV GVHD, as well. Of the 62 patients, 25 had upper GI GVHD accompanied only by limited (stage 1 and 2) skin GVHD; 13 others with upper GI GVHD plus limited skin involvement at initial presentation later progressed to more extensive multiorgan involvement; 24 others presented with upper GI along with other organ GVHD. This upper GI GVHD syndrome, first recognized at our center in 1983, has been diagnosed with increasing frequency (22% +/- 5%) in the most recent 5-year interval. The upper GI GVHD syndrome is more responsive to immunosuppressive therapy than grade II GVHD defined by Seattle criteria, with complete and continuing responses to treatment observed in 71% +/- 17% (95% confidence interval) of those with the upper GI GVHD syndrome compared with only 37% +/- 10% complete responses in other patients with grade II GVHD (P = .002). Patients failing immunosuppressive therapy for upper GI GVHD often progress to symptomatic lower GI involvement, suggesting that this syndrome may be an earlier and perhaps more treatable manifestation of this unique intestinal immunopathology, which is followed by chronic GVHD in 74% of patients. While upper GI GVHD symptoms are nonspecific and require invasive histologic and microbiologic studies to confirm the diagnosis, we believe this syndrome has been underreported after allogeneic BMT and propose its recognition within the clinical GVHD scoring system.

A study to determine the reproducibility of histopathological findings and diagnoses of rejection was carried out on a series of 42 liver allograft needle biopsy specimens by five pathologists practicing at four liver transplant centers. Pathologists from each of the four centers read each slide independently on two different occasions and were asked to assess 12 histopathological features and render a diagnosis. For all histological variables, the intrarater agreement was higher than the interrater agreement. Moderate to excellent agreement occurred among the pathologists about all histological variables thought to be important in establishing the diagnosis of acute rejection (i.e., portal tract inflammation, subendothelial inflammation and bile duct damage). Other variables such as lobular disarray, bile duct proliferation and particularly arteritis, however, were only fairly or poorly reproducible. Surprisingly, the diagnosis of acute rejection was more reproducible than the individual histopathological findings that were thought to be the basis for the diagnosis. The agreement for the diagnosis of chronic rejection, however, varied according to observer. We noted that relatively inexperienced observers within this group had some difficulties agreeing with more experienced observers in establishing a diagnosis of chronic rejection. These findings demonstrate that the histopathological diagnosis of acute cellular liver allograft rejection is highly reproducible within a group of experienced pathologists and that this diagnosis can be pooled in a common data base with confidence.