Exploratory Serum-Based Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Analysis in Crohn's Disease: A Pilot Cross-Sectional...

Area of Science:

• Biochemistry
• Spectroscopy
• Medical Diagnostics

Background:

• Crohn's disease (CD) diagnosis relies on methods that can be invasive, costly, or lack specificity.
• Accurate and timely CD diagnosis is crucial for effective patient management.
• Novel diagnostic approaches are needed to improve early detection and monitoring of CD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the potential of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for minimally invasive detection of CD.
• To differentiate serum biochemical profiles of CD patients from healthy controls using SERS.
• To identify specific spectral biomarkers associated with Crohn's disease.

Main Methods:

• A pilot cross-sectional study involving age- and sex-matched CD patients and healthy controls.
• Serum samples analyzed using SERS.
• Multivariate analysis techniques, including principal component analysis-linear discriminant analysis (PCA-LDA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), applied to spectral data.
• Leave-one-out cross-validation used for performance evaluation.

Main Results:

• PCA-LDA achieved 88.24% accuracy in differentiating CD from controls (AUC 0.881).
• PLS-DA demonstrated higher performance with 92.16% accuracy (AUC 0.937).
• Discriminatory spectral bands identified suggest alterations in purine metabolism, protein structure, lipids, and nucleic acids in CD patients.

Conclusions:

• Serum SERS combined with multivariate analysis shows significant potential for distinguishing CD patients from healthy individuals.
• This minimally invasive approach could offer a rapid and specific diagnostic tool for Crohn's disease.
• Larger multicenter studies are necessary to validate these promising findings and assess clinical utility.