PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sen Yagi
AU  - Shinya Furukawa
AU  - Kana Shiraishi
AU  - Yu Hashimoto
AU  - Kazuhiro Tange
AU  - Kenichirou Mori
AU  - Tomoyuki Ninomiya
AU  - Seiyuu Suzuki
AU  - Naozumi Shibata
AU  - Hidehiro Murakami
AU  - Katsuhisa Ohashi
AU  - Aki Hasebe
AU  - Hideomi Tomida
AU  - Yasunori Yamamoto
AU  - Eiji Takeshita
AU  - Yoshio Ikeda
AU  - Yoichi Hiasa
TI  - Effect of disease duration on the association between serum albumin and mucosal healing in patients with ulcerative colitis
AID  - 10.1136/bmjgast-2021-000662
DP  - 2021 Jun 01
TA  - BMJ Open Gastroenterology
PG  - e000662
VI  - 8
IP  - 1
4099  - http://bmjopengastro.bmj.com//content/8/1/e000662.short
4100  - http://bmjopengastro.bmj.com//content/8/1/e000662.full
SO  - BMJ Open Gastro2021 Jun 01; 8
AB  - Objective Serum albumin is used as a marker of acute inflammation. Several studies have addressed the association between serum albumin and clinical outcome in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). While mucosal healing (MH) has been indicated as the therapeutic goal for UC, the association between serum albumin and MH remains unclear. We evaluated this issue in patients with UC overall and explored whether duration of UC affected this association.Design This cross-sectional study recruited consecutive patients with UC. Study subjects consisted of 273 Japanese patients with UC. Serum albumin was divided into tertiles based on its distribution in all study subjects. One endoscopy specialist was responsible for measuring partial MH and MH, which were defined as a Mayo endoscopic subscore of 0–1 and 0, respectively. The association between serum albumin and clinical outcomes was assessed by multivariate logistic regression.Results Rates of clinical remission, partial MH and MH were 57.9%, 63% and 26%, respectively. Only high serum albumin (>4.4 mg/dL) was significantly positively associated with MH (OR 2.29 (95% CI: 1.03 to 5.29), p for trend=0.043). In patients with short UC duration (<7 years) only, high serum albumin was significantly positively associated with MH and clinical remission. In patients with long UC duration (≥7 years), in contrast, no association between serum albumin and clinical outcomes was found.Conclusion In Japanese patients with UC, serum albumin was significantly positively associated with MH. In patients with short UC duration, serum albumin might be a useful complementary marker for MH.Data are available upon reasonable request. The data sets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.