Use of biomarkers in inflammatory bowel disease

There are many useful biomarkers for initial diagnosis and the management of inflammatory bowel disease. Serologic biomarkers have been traditionally used because they are widely disposable, but recently faecal biomarkers, especially faecal calprotectin, have acquired great importance as they have shown to be more precise when establishing suspicion of the disease and also as predictors of mucosal healing or persistence of inflammatory activity. Faecal calprotectin is a good tool for predicting abnormal endoscopic studies, but has limited specificity because its levels can be altered in many digestive diseases presenting with similar symptoms. The precision of faecal calprotectin is higher when associated with other altered parameters, especially with C-reactive protein, or with clinical scores of inflammatory activity. Finally, there are many new generation serologic and faecal biomarkers. Despite there not being much evidence about these yet, some of them have shown promising results in different studies.