Despite its high prevalence and many years of basic and clinical research, pathophysiology of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis remains a great challenge. The recent advances in molecular biology techniques have provided identification of a great number of molecules related to these diseases that may help in a near future to understand its still obscure aspects. Many evidences have recently demonstrated that inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) result from an imbalance between bowel commensal bacterial flora and the immunological mucosal apparatus. The very consistent finding that mutations in NOD2/CARD15 gene occur in a high percentage of Crohn's disease patients and its phenotype correlation have boosted further research to identify other IBD-related molecules. Indeed, many other variations in gene expression have been demonstrated to be related to pathophysiology of IBD including different aspects such as inate immunity, inflammatory response and mucosal barrier disfunction. The observation of the correlation between these gene expression variation, disease behaviour and response to therapeutics may contribute in a near future to understand most questions regarding these complex diseases.
Crohn's disease; Ulcerative colitis; molecular biology
