Serologic markers in inflammatory bowel disease. Clin Chem 2006;52:171–81

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an enduring dis-ease involving mostly young people, with symptoms of bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Several anti-bodies have been associated with IBD, the 2 most comprehensively studied being autoantibodies to neu-trophils (atypical perinuclear anti-neutrophil cytoplas-mic antibodies) and anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae anti-bodies. This review focuses on the value of these antibodies for diagnosing IBD, differentiating Crohn disease from ulcerative colitis, indeterminate colitis, monitoring disease, defining clinical phenotypes, pre-dicting response to therapy, and as subclinical markers. Pancreatic antibodies and newly identified anti-micro-bial antibodies (anti-outer membrane porin C, anti-I2, and anti-flagellin) are also reviewed