Blood changes may signal inflammatory bowel disease a decade before diagnosis

Research presented at the UEG Week gastroenterology congress in Barcelona indicates that immune system changes in the blood can be detected up to ten years before a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.

By analyzing 2,000 blood samples from 500 individuals, researchers identified that those who later developed inflammatory bowel disease exhibited significantly lower antibody diversity compared to healthy controls. In future Crohn’s patients, antibodies showed stronger reactions to herpesviruses and flagellin, a bacterial protein. For those developing ulcerative colitis, increased reactions were noted toward herpesviruses and the body's own proteins.

A computer model based on these findings successfully distinguished future patients from healthy individuals with high accuracy scores of 0.90 for Crohn’s disease and 0.84 for ulcerative colitis. Lead author Arno Bourgonje noted that specific antibody profiles are linked to more complicated forms of Crohn’s disease years before symptoms appear. However, researchers emphasized that these results are not yet ready for clinical practice and require further validation across more diverse patient groups.