Introduction
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an idiopathic chronic inflammatory bowel disease. The current goal of UC treatment is to modify the natural history of the disease and prevent long-term bowel damage and subsequent disability by using appropriate therapy and monitoring at appropriate intervals.
In 2015, the Selecting Therapeutic Targets in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (STRIDE) committee proposed a treat-to-target (T2T) approach and recommended that the therapeutic target in UC should be both clinical and patient-reported outcomes (PRO) remission as well as endoscopic remission with Mayo endoscopic subscore (MES) 0 and 1. However, in STRIDE II, only MES 0 of endoscopic remission is the treatment target and histologic remission is also considered to be a treatment target. Previous studies have demonstrated that patients who achieve an MES of 0 are more likely to have a longer duration of clinical remission than patients without endoscopic remission. Additionally, several studies have shown that histologic remission is a distinct treatment target from endoscopic remission in UC and better predicts clinical remission.
The current treatment target of UC is endoscopic remission with MES 0 as well as clinical remission, but distinguishing between MES 0 and MES 1 is difficult. In our previous study, we demonstrated that histologic activity predicts clinical relapse in UC patients with MES 0 or 1. However, there is no study on whether histologic remission can predict another target, such as endoscopic remission. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether histologic activity can predict the maintenance of endoscopic remission in UC patients with MES 0 or 1.
Aims & Methods
The aim of this study was to evaluate whether histologic activity can predict the maintenance of endoscopic remission in UC patients with Mayo endoscopic subscore (MES) 0 or 1. Four hundred ninety-two UC patients who underwent histologic evaluation at Samsung Medical Center from January 2018 to December 2020 were included in this study. Patients were divided into two groups based on their histologic activity: histologic remission and active. Endoscopic activity was assessed during follow-up, and the primary outcome was endoscopic remission according to histologic activity. Endoscopic remission was defined as an MES of 0, while histologic remission was defined as a Geboes score of < 3.1.
Results
Among the 492 patients, 435 were evaluated for endoscopic activity during the first colonoscopic follow-up, and 146 patients were evaluated during the second follow-up. The median time for the first follow-up colonoscopy was 27.3 months. The histologic active group at index colonoscopy was more likely to experience endoscopic relapse than the histologic remission group (hazard ratio (HR)= 1.63, P < 0.001). In subgroup analysis in patients without clinical relapse, the histologic active group was still more likely to experience endoscopic relapse than the histologic remission group (HR = 1.53, P = 0.030).
Conclusion
The patients who achieve histologic remission are more likely to maintain endoscopic remission compared to those with histologic activity.
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