Delineating inflammatory bowel disease through transcriptomic studies: current review of progress and evidence

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which comprises of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is an idiopathic relapsing and remitting disease in which the interplay of different environment, microbial, immunological and genetic factors that attribute to the progression of the disease. Numerous studies have been conducted in multiple aspects including clinical, endoscopy and histopathology for the diagnostics and treatment of IBD. However, the molecular mechanism underlying the aetiology and pathogenesis of IBD is still poorly understood. This review tries to critically assess the scientific evidence at the transcriptomic level as it would help in the discovery of RNA molecules in tissues or serum between the healthy and diseased or different IBD subtypes. These molecular signatures could potentially serve as a reliable diagnostic or prognostic biomarker. Researchers have also embarked on the study of transcriptome to be utilized in targeted therapy. We focus on the evaluation and discussion related to the publications reporting the different approaches and techniques used in investigating the transcriptomic changes in IBD with the intention to offer new perspectives to the landscape of the disease.