KIF9-AS1 as a Potential Biomarker in Ulcerative Colitis Disease, AHMED E. TAHA, SAMAR E. ABDEL -WAHAB, HEND A. TAMIM and MOHAMED S. ABDEL-BARY
Background: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflam-matory illness of the colon & one of the two main Inflamma-tory bowel disease (IBD) types. Unfortunately, The majority of cases with UC exhibit severe symptoms & signs as a result of the absence of sensitive biomarkers that enable early detection. Aim of Study: To assess the role of KIF9-AS1 as a poten-tial biomarker in the identification of UC disease. Patients and Methods: This research involved 68 individu-als who were subdivided into four groups to evaluate the value of KIF9-AS1 in diagnosis of UC: Group (1): Included 17 nor-mal subjects as a control group; Group (2): Involved17 cases with Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS); Group (3): Included 17 patients with active UC; Group (4): involved 17 cases with UC in remission. All cases were exposed to clinical examination, full history taking, laboratory investigations as CBC, CRP, FC & KIF9-AS1 and colonoscopy. Results: The study demonstrated that WBC, CRP & FC were significantly elevated in ulcerative colitis groups than normal and IBS groups (p<0.001) with a cut-off value 3.8 for CRP and 303 for FC so that it may be considered a diagnostic factor for ulcerative colitis disease. KIF9-AS1 level between the four studied groups showed slightly higher level in UC patients but with no statistically significant variance (p<0.05). Conclusion: Plasma samples from cases with UC con-tained a greater concentration of KIF9-AS1 than those from healthy controls. Though, it was not statistically significant. Also, Other inflammatory markers such as WBCs, CRP & FC were statistically significant to be greater in active UC cases than UC cases in remission and controls. So, they can be sim-ple diagnostic markers for active UC patients.