Morphometric Assessment of Chronic Inflammatory Cells in Colonic Biopsies of Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

• Main Authors: Anshul Singh, Anupriya Nautiyal, Shailesh R Patel, Vatsala Misra, SP Misra, Manisha Dwivedi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: JCDR Research and Publications Private Limited 2019-05-01
• Series: Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research
• Subjects: colitis; gastroenteritis; intraepithelial lymphocytes; mast cells
• Online Access: https://jcdr.net/articles/PDF/12852/40569_PD(KM)_V-2(PoG_KM)_CE[Ra1]_PF1(AG_OM)_PFA(SL)_PB(NC_AG)_PF2(TR_SL)_PN(SL).pdf
• ISSN: 2249-782X; 0973-709X

Introduction: Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder which has a complex pathophysiology including the role of inflammation being recently studied. Aim: To assess the role of mast cells and Intraepithelial Lymphocytes (IELs) in IBS patients by morphometry. Materials and Methods: In this study, 148 cases of IBS using the Rome III criteria and 28 controls were taken. IBS patients were divided into two subgroups of Post Infectious (PI) and Non Post Infectious (NPI) subgroups on the basis of past history of episodes of gastroenteritis. All of them underwent full length colonoscopy and biopsy from the descending colon. Histopathology of these two were compared with special attention to morphometric count of IELs by “pin hole” method and mast cells using toluidine blue highlighting. Results: Biopsies were unremarkable in 23(15.54%) patients, whereas 125 (84.46%) patients were diagnosed as Non Specific Colitis (NSC). The difference in IEL counts and mast cell counts were extremely significant (p<0.0001) in controls vs patients, controls vs PI-IBS patients and PI-IBS vs NPI-IBS subgroup whereas the difference was significant (p<0.001) in controls vs. NPI-IBS subgroup. Conclusion: The present study concluded that mast cells and IELs show a significant difference between IBS and non IBS cases, and could have an important role to play in the pathophysiology of IBS.