Background: Ulcerative colitis is a disease with an unpredictable evolution, often highlighted endoscopically, that is associated with persistent inflammation affecting the patient's quality of life. An attempt was made to discover surrogate markers to evaluate the endoscopic remission of the disease in order to increase the patient's quality of life and also their adherence to the treatment and monitoring plan. One such marker is fecal calprotectin (FC). Aims: To confirm the correlation between biomarkers and endoscopic disease activity and to define the optimal cut off value to detect clinical and endoscopic remission in a center of Romania. Methods: This was a prospective study that included 59 patients diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at the Department of Internal Medicine III, University Emergency Hospital of Bucharest. Patients had fecal calprotectin measurements and colonoscopy/rectosigmoidoscopy performed during baseline, 6 and 12 months. For endoscopic activity the Ulcerative Colitis Endoscopic Index of Severity (UCEIS) was used. Results: During the study, relapses have occurred in 35.6% of patients, the median age was 47 years (21-77). During the study, the FC measurement was significantly increased at 3 months (median, range µg/g; 715, 14-4000) and at 6 months (median, range µg/g; 650, 4.5-3000) (p ≤ 0.05). Another inflammatory biomarker studied was CRP, which showed increased values at 3 months (median, range, mg/dL; 1.86, 0.14-58.9), at 6 months (median, range, mg/dL; 2.36, 0.12-45.8) and at 9 months (median, range, mg/dl; 2, 0.12-25.9) compared to the baseline (p = 0.01). Patients with recurrence of the disease also associated an increase in the values of clinical evaluation scores (SCCAI; p = 0.00001), but also endoscopic (UCEIS; p = 0.0006) Conclusion: A relapse is associated independently with younger age, the extension of the disease (E2-E3), increased FC level, C reactive protein, hemoglobin concentration, SCCAI index and UCEIS score.
Keywords: C-reactive protein; endoscopic remission; fecal calprotectin; hemoglobin concentration; ulcerative colitis.