Authors
Mohamed Farouk 1 Helal F Hetta 2 Amel Ahmed Moustafa 1 Essam Eldeen M O Mahran 1 Mohamed Abdelghani 3 Manal M Darwish 4, 5 Ebtisam Shawky Ahmed Hassanin 6 Mohamed Abdel Fatah Mohamed Sayed 7
1 Department of Tropical medicine and gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, New Valley University, Elkharga, Egypt.
2 Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut 71515, Egypt
3 Department of tropical medicine and gastroenterology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
4 Family and Community Medicine Department, PhD, Professor, College of Medicine, Jouf University, Sakaka 72388, Saudi Arabia.
5 Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
6 Department of Clinical pathology, Faculty of Medicine, New Valley University, Elkharga, Egypt
7 Tropical Medicine and Gastroenterology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Aswan University, Aswan, Egypt.
10.21608/ajgh.2025.382603.1080
Abstract
Background:
In IBD patients, colonoscopy is essential for diagnosis, determining severity, tracking therapeutic response, screening for malignancy, and making critical therapeutic decisions. A non-invasive diagnostic test is necessary to enhance the filtering of patients who need a colonoscopy. Faecal calprotectin (FC) provides a non-invasive method for measuring disease activity in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Aim:
Investigating the effect of colonoscopy on testing faecal calprotectin results after the procedure.
Patients and Methods:
In a quasi-experimental study (a before-and-after design), 34 patients underwent colonoscopy after being tested for fecal calprotectin within one week before the procedure. All patients received the same bowel cleansing preparation. FC was measured at 3 points: (a) specimen 1 (FC1): within one week before bowel cleansing by a laxative, (b) specimen 2 (FC2): within the first 48 hours after colonoscopy, (c) specimen 3 (FC3): one to two weeks after colonoscopy.
Results:
The FC level significantly increased (p = 0.000) in FC2 in 100% of the study group. The median of the difference in FC levels between FC1 and FC2 was 78 (10-836). FC level increased in FC2 by more than 100 µg/g in 22/34 (64.7%). The greater difference between FC2 and FC1 levels was significantly associated with the colonoscopy''''s longer duration (p = 0.006). The FC level decreased significantly (p = 0.000) in FC3 to a level lower than FC2 in 100% of the study group. FC3 decreased to a level lower than or equal to FC1 in 20 out of 34 (58.8%).
Conclusion:
Testing for FC can be inaccurate and unreliable if performed too soon after a colonoscopy.
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