Longitudinal Study of Myoelectric GutPrint of Healthy Controls and Crohn's Disease Patients During Flare and Remission

Crohn's disease (CD) patients can have a chronic, relapsing course with frequent flares despite aggressive therapy. Flares are often difficult to predict. The goal of disease monitoring is to identify patients at risk for flare in order to treat earlier, with the hope of maintaining remission and avoiding irreversible bowel damage such as fistulas and strictures that may lead to surgery. Although endoscopic visualization of the mucosa allows in some cases ability to predict flare and determine deep remission, this procedure is invasive and requires anesthesia and a bowel preparation, and is not without risk. Abdominal pain, cramps and diarrhea are particularly common symptoms of CD, which are associated with alteration of gastrointestinal (GI) motility. Thus better understanding of GI motility patterns in CD flare and remission states may be helpful for prediction of flare for guiding appropriate therapy.

The goal of this study is to determine whether the motility patterns measured by the G-Tech non-invasive, wireless patch system can provide useful insight for routine CD care. Three G-Tech patches will be placed on the patients' abdomen and they will be given an iPod Touch to carry with them for the next 3-6 days. Data from the patches is processed offline to obtain motility patterns of the stomach, small intestine and colon. These patterns represent a rich trove of data that can be studied in multiple ways to provide comparisons and insight. Some examples are the overall strength of motor activity in each of the organs, the duration and rhythmicity, the correlation with meals, pain events and bowel movements, day to day variations and their correlation with symptoms, and diurnal effects.