The Diagnostic Value of Serum Oncostatin M and Galactin 3 as Biomarkers in Diagnosis of Ulcerative Colitis Disease

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)-Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and inflammatory bowel disease unclassified (IBD-U)-are chronic inflammatory conditions that mainly affect the gastrointestinal tract but might also involve other organs, so they are considered systemic diseases. IBD is mainly diagnosed in young people, and is associated with significant morbidity and disability (Kaplan, 2015). Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an idiopathic, chronic inflammatory illness of the colon that is characterized by continous, diffuse mucosal inflammation (Ordás et al., 2012).

With 505 new cases per 100,000 people, Europe now has the highest prevalence of UC, followed by North America with 249 new cases per 100,000 people (Al-Fawzan et al., 2023), With an annual percentage rise of 4.3% (Kucharzik et al., 2020), it is becoming increasingly commonplace worldwide as more nations adopt Westernized lifestyles, leading to fast increases in incidence rates.

The aetiology involves interactions between the environment, immune system, gut microbiome and a genetic predisposition to disease (Kobayashi et al., 2020).

Ulcerative colitis presents with bloody diarrhea, frequency, abdominal pain, fatigue and faecal incontinence.

The pathogenesis of UC has not been elucidated yet, but it is supposed to be a consequence of unbalanced expression of molecules that have both anti- and pro-inflammatory properties (Ogino et al., 2021).