Crohn ’s Disease in Clinical Remission Is Marked by Systemic Oxidative Stress

Conclusion: Plasma free thiols are reduced in patients with CD in clinical remission compared to healthy controls. Thus, subclinical CD disease activity is reflected by systemic oxidative stress and plasma free thiols may be a relevant therapeutic target and biomarker to monitor disease activity in CD. Introduction Crohn’s disease (CD) is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) characterized by chronic transmural intestinal inflammation that can affect any part of the gastro-intestinal tract (Sartor, 2008). Most patients follow a disease course of alternating exacerbations and remissions, which are difficult to predict and adequately treat (Cosnes et al., 2011). CD has a complex, multifactorial origin, eventually leading to an inappropriate and uncontrolled immune response with impaired gut mucosal homeostasis (Fiocchi, 1998; Abraham and Cho, 2009). At the mucosal level, IBD is characterized by chronic infiltration of various activated inflammatory cells, including polymorphonuclear cells, eosinophils and plasma cells (Kruidenier and Verspaget, 2002). Besides, even in clinical remission, subclinical intestinal inflammation is present in a large proportion of CD patients (Cosnes et al., 2011). Oxidative stress has been implicated to play a pivotal role in CD pathogenesis, and may be a key effector mechanism leading to cellular/molecular damage and tissue injury (Pereira et al., 2015; Guan and Lan, 2018). Oxidative stress is characterized by increased production of ...
Source: Frontiers in Physiology - Category: Physiology Source Type: research