The risk of developing CRC is Indian patients with UC is lower than that reported from the West. Strategies for cancer surveillance in Indian patients with UC need to be tailored accordingly.

ABSTRACr Lung innervation has been studied in the past by methylene blue staining and silver impregnation and more recently by histochemical methods. These techniques give only a partial picture of the total innervation. We have delineated the innervation of the lung in man and three other mammalian species by immunostaining with antibodies to two new markers of nervous tissue. These markers are neurone-specific enolase (NSE), an enzyme present in nerve cells in both the central and the peripheral nervous systems, and S-100, a protein found in glial cells. Throughout the respiratory tract NSE was localised in ganglion cells and nerve fibres in all species examined, while S-100 was found in the supporting glial cells of ganglia and in the Schwann cells of peripheral nerves. The distribution of NSE immunoreactivity in serial sections was compared with that of acetylcholinesterase-containing, noradrenergic, and peptide-containing nerves. In all areas NSE was found to be a specific marker for all three types of nerves. Thus these two antibodies provide an effective histological means of examining both the neuronal and the nonneuronal components of the lung innervation and should be of value in investigating this system in lung disease.The lung has a rich nerve supply, consisting of both sensory and motor divisions. The methods used to demonstrate this innervation by light microscopy in earlier studies included methylene blue and silver staining."3 More recently, histochemical techniques have been applied, for example, to localise acetylcholinesterase, which is thought to be a marker for cholinergic nerves,46 and to demonstrate formaldehyde-induced fluorescence in aminergic nerves.78 All these methods have their limitations and give only a partial view of the total innervation.Recently two highly acidic soluble proteins have been isolated from brain extracts and characterised.9The first, neurone-specific enolase (NSE), is an isoenzyme of the glycolytic enzyme enolase.'0 Antibodies raised against this enzyme and used as immunochemical reagents show that it is specifically localised in neurones" in both the central and the Address for reprint requests:

In this study, 10 % of patients with unexplained portal hypertension (cryptogenic chronic liver disease) had associated celiac disease. In addition, an unexplained enteropathy was seen in a significant proportion of study patients, more so in patients with cryptogenic chronic liver disease. This finding warrants further investigation.

The high negative predictive value of LBT in SLE suggests that it is valuable in excluding diseases clinically similar to SLE.

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