19/04/2012

A team of the researchers from the Digestive Physiology and Physiopathology group at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) has described, for the first time, molecular alterations in irritable bowel syndrome. This finding changes radically the vision of a disease considered until now functional and without biological translation to the visioni of an entity with biological underlying alterations in the intestine.This initial description of an organic alteration in irritable bowel syndrome can mean, to begin, a base on which to identify diagnostic and therapeutics targets specific of the disease and, hereby, to be able to develop useful scoreboards for the positive diagnosis and new tools of treatment directed to the core of the problem. In the medium term, this finding will mean a great advance related to the symptomatic treatments that are used in this moment.The results of this study, published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology and, now highlighted by Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, due to the implications and the change of paradigm that will mean for this disease, are focused on the following aspects: distinctive alterations of the normality in the profile of the genes expressed in the intestine, major activation of such immunological cells as the mastocito and anomalous signposting between cells in the small intestine (concretely in the jejunum) of these patients, alterations that are associated with the importance of the symptomatology.