sepharose and Crohn-Disease

Direct tissue isoelectric focusing was used as a procedure to analyze differences in soluble tissue protein profiles of resected intestinal segments and endoscopic biopsies from patients with ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and colonic cancer. Extraction of tissue proteins was accomplished by electrophoresis of mucosal cryostat sections on agarose gels across a broad pH gradient. The inflamed colonic mucosa from Crohn's disease patients showed similar isoelectric focusing protein patterns. Small bowel mucosa from a patient with both colonic diverticular disease and Crohn's disease showed protein patterns identical with that of the mucosa from a patient with only Crohn's disease. The inflamed mucosae from ulcerative colitis patients revealed identical protein patterns but were distinct from those of non-inflamed ulcerative colitis mucosa and from the inflamed mucosae from Crohn's disease patients. Non-inflamed small bowel mucosae from cancer, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn's disease patients showed distinct protein patterns which were absent in the non-inflamed large bowel mucosae. The inflamed resected ileum of a Crohn's disease patient exhibited protein patterns similar to those of the biopsy of an inflamed mid-transverse large bowel. Mucosal biopsies from inflamed sigmoid colon of a Crohn's disease patient showed different protein patterns than those in biopsies from the inflamed mid-transverse colon. Thus, distinctive isoelectric focusing protein patterns may be useful in differentiating Crohn's colitis and ulcerative colitis when granulomata are absent, and in resolving indeterminant colitis to one of these classic inflammatory bowel diseases.

Topics: Biopsy; Colitis, Ulcerative; Colon; Colonic Neoplasms; Crohn Disease; Epitopes; Humans; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases; Intestinal Mucosa; Isoelectric Focusing; Neoplasm Proteins; Proteins; Sepharose

The locomotor function of polymorphonuclear cells (cellular chemotaxis) and serum chemotactic activity (humoral chemotaxis) were studied in 51 patients with Crohn's disease using a method of migration under agarose gel. To study cellular chemotaxis patient's polymorphonuclear cells were challenged against normal Zymosan activated serum and humoral chemotaxis was evaluated testing the patient's Zymosan activated serum against normal polymorphonuclear cells. Cellular chemotaxis in the Crohn's disease group was normal (although 30% of the 51 patients had migration values out of the normal range), while humoral chemotaxis was significantly lower in Crohn's disease patients than in the control group. However, the value of humoral chemotaxis in the group of Crohn's disease patients treated with steroids was lower than that of patients not treated, thus accounting for the low mean value observed inthe Crohn's disease-group as a whole. The present results suggest that a defective chemotactic response may occur in some Crohn's disease patients, particularly during steroid treatment. These findings might be related either to a defective generation of complement derived chemotactic factors or to the presence of circulating inhibitors.

Topics: Adrenal Cortex Hormones; Adult; Chemotactic Factors; Chemotaxis, Leukocyte; Complement C3; Complement C3c; Complement C4; Crohn Disease; Female; Humans; Immunoglobulins; Male; Methods; Neutrophils; Sepharose