Usefulness of Serum Leucine-rich Alpha 2 Glycoprotein in Crohn's Disease: Is There Any Difference between Small Intestine and Colonic Lesions?

Abstract

Background: The usefulness of leucine-rich alpha 2 glycoprotein (LRG) to evaluate Crohn's disease (CD) activity differs among various intestinal lesions. We aimed to evaluate the association between endoscopic disease activity based on the Simple Endoscopic Score for Crohn's disease (SES-CD) and LRG level separately for small intestinal and colonic lesions. Methods: We examined the correlation between LRG level and SES-CD and performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to determine the LRG cutoff value in 141 patients who underwent endoscopy (total 235 measurements). Furthermore, the LRG cutoff value was analyzed by comparing small intestinal and colonic lesions. Results: LRG levels were significantly higher in patients without mucosal healing than in those with mucosal healing (15.9 μg/mL vs 10.5 μg/mL, P