Active clinical trials for "Enterocolitis"

The human microbiota, a collection of microorganisms mostly settled in the gastrointestinal tract, plays a major role in the maintenance of the hosts' health and in development of disease as well. Exposure to different conditions early in life contributes to distinct "pioneer" bacterial communities, which shape the newborn infants' development and influence their later physiological, immunological and neurological homeostasis. Newborn infants with congenital malformations of the gastrointestinal tract (CMGIT), necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and spontaneous intestinal perforation (SIP) commonly require abdominal surgery and enterostomy. While intestinal microbiota has been extensively studied in infants with anatomically uninterrupted intestine, the knowledge of longitudinal intestinal colonization in this population is scarce. This is an exploratory, observational, and longitudinal prospective study, primarily aimed to determine longitudinally the colonization of the proximal remnant intestine, in newborn infants with enterostomy after surgery (three weeks) for CMGIT, NEC and SIP. The secondary aim is to explore the associations of the colonization with the mode of delivery, gestational age, postnatal age, duration of fasting, type of enteric feeding, antimicrobial therapy, H2-receptor antagonist therapy, and length of proximal remnant intestine.

Background Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most serious conditions in newborns, affecting up to 10% of very low birth weight infants (VLBW). In the most premature population mortality rates can rise as high as 60%. Typical findings on abdominal radiography (AR) include pnuematosis intestinalis (PI), portal vein gas (PVG) and pneumoperitoneum, but are sometimes not present even in severe cases. Abdominal ultrasound (AUS) can depict PI, PVG and pnuemoperitoneum (in some cases a head of AR), but it also provides other crucial information such as bowel wall viability (thickness or thinning) and free abdominal fluid. These additional findings are helpful in expediting diagnosis and management of NEC. Methods and analysis The hypothesis being tested is that preforming an AUR in patients with clinical symptoms of NEC but inconclusive/normal AR will enhance detection rates, and expedite treatment in infants born at <32 weeks. Discussion The use of AUS together with AR as an add-on test may increase the accuracy of diagnosing NEC, and precipitate treatment. Swift implementation of antibiotics and bowel rest is extremely important. To our best knowledge, our study will be the first to focus only on VLBW, who are most prone to NEC. It will also be the first multi-centre study evaluating the use of AUS as an add-on test, enabling us to recruit a significantly higher number of patients compared to published studies.

Intestinal acute graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) is a life-threatening complication after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Non-invasive diagnostic procedures are still lacking and diagnosis is difficult. We hypothesized that contrast-enhanced ultrasound sonography (CEUS) could detect microcirculation changes of the bowel walls during intestinal GVHD and help to detect and monitor treatment response. We employed CEUS to prospectively evaluate intestinal GVHD in 83 consecutive transplant patients between 2008 and 2011. Fourteen /83 patients with biopsy-proven intestinal GVHD were selected as study group. Fourteen patients with biopsy-proven stomach GVHD without intestinal symptoms (N=16), normal volunteers (N=6) and patients with neutropenic enterocolitis (N=4), were chosen as control group. All patients were evaluated with both standard transabdominal ultrasonography (US) and CEUS at the onset of intestinal symptoms, during clinical follow up and at flare of symptoms. Standard US revealed non-specific bowel wall thickening, and simultaneous involvement of multiple intestinal segments in 9/14 patients. CEUS showed three distinct patterns of microcirculation changes that correlated with GVHD activity. These findings were not observed in the control group. Moreover, CEUS findings correlated with treatment response and predicted flare of intestinal symptoms. CEUS is a non-invasive, easily reproducible bed-side tool to detect and monitor intestinal GVHD.

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a severe gastrointestinal disorder with high morbidity and mortality (20-40%), affecting predominantly premature neonates. NEC continues to present a diagnostic challenge to clinicians. The initial clinical manifestations of NEC are non-specific and indistinguishable from other gastrointestinal disorders and sepsis. The first goal of this study is to find and evaluate tests to diagnose NEC at an early stage. For the development of new diagnostic markers, the investigators require knowledge of pathophysiological processes that underlie NEC, which still remain unclear. Therefore, the second goal of this study is to elucidate the etiology of NEC. Furthermore, understanding of the pathophysiology of NEC can offer the possibility to develop new therapeutical treatments.

Necrotizing enterocolitis is the most common gastroenterological emergency in neonatology. Its mortality is high, ranging from 15 to 30%. Prematurity is the main risk factor for necrotizing enterocolitis, as well as the very low birth weight (<1500 g) associated with prematurity. Among the early neonatal complications of intrauterine growth restriction neonates, necrotizing enterocolitis is frequently reported in the literature. The situation of chronic hypoxia of these fetuses is at the origin of a vascular redistribution favoring the cerebral circulation to the detriment of the mesenteric vascularization, which could lead to the development of an necrotizing enterocolitis. However, data from the literature concerning this over-risk of necrotizing enterocolitis in the case of intrauterine growth restriction are discordant. The heterogeneity of the definitions used for the intrauterine growth restriction and diagnostic criteria for necrotizing enterocolitis from one study to another could explain these discrepancies. The investigator's hypothesis is that the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis is higher among newborns in intrauterine growth restriction compared to control children.

Surgical procedures for complex intestinal neonatal and paediatric diseases may require the use of an ostomy, in order to discharge the upper intestine. The traditional loop ileostomy has recently be challenged by ileostomies in continuity, either the Santulli or the Bishop-Koop one, that both decompresses the proximal dilated bowel and allow intestine fluid to pass through the underlying ileal anastomosis. Nevertheless, to date, no evaluation of their indications, complications and potential benefits has been made. The aim of this study is to retrospectively compare the outcomes of loop ileostomies and ileostomies in continuity in a paediatric population. It is thus expected to better define the specific indications for these different types of ileostomies in the paediatric and neonatal population.

In this study; The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in fasting and dietary and mesenteric blood flow in the acute period during and after transfusion and to evaluate the necrotizing enterocolitis.

A prospective, single-center, cohort study to allow collecting observations of patients receiving induction chemotherapy for primary Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), collecting biological samples(including fecal samples for microbiota analyses, and metagenomic profiling in blood samples) and clinical outcomes (notably the occurrence of neutropenic enterocolitis), with a nested case-control analysis comparing patients with or without neutropenic enterocolitis

Despite a greater understanding of NEC physiopathology, modest progress has been done in terms of intervention and prevention of the disease over the past three decades, being the mortality rate unchanged. Investigators intend to leverage our knowledge and technical expertise developed with fetal enteroids to further investigate the processes leading to NEC by deriving and performing functional studies on human intestinal enteroids generated from intestinal resection for therapeutic reasons in NEC and non-NEC patients Generate a tissue biorepository composed of: enteroids and other lamina propria cells Comparative studies of the gene expression profile of tissue, epithelial enteroids and underlying lamina propria of NEC, non-NEC, hypoxic and non-hypoxic infants In vitro functional studies for the evaluation of critical factors in NEC pathophysiology In vitro functional studies to identify the activation of processes leading to intestinal epithelium necroptosis and/or apoptosis in bacteria challenged and hypoxic conditions Correlative studies of the impact of perinatal variables on the intestinal barrier functionality at baseline and challenged with pathogens In vitro comparison of the intestinal barrier functionality in infants complicated by condition of prenatal hypoxia versus non hypoxic infants Validation the NEC enteroids as an in vitro model for the identification of treatments and prevention of NEC

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a severe, sometimes life-threatening inflammation of the intestine that occurs most often in premature babies. If it progresses, the wall of the intestine may perforate, spilling bacteria and stool into the abdomen. Parts or all of the intestine may die. Despite 30 years of clinical studies, the cause of NEC remains unknown. In this study, we will be conducting an independent case-control validation study to verify the diagnostic and prognostic biomarker panels, develop validated biomarkers on boisensors in preparation for prospective validation studies, and conduct independent prospective validation of biosensor based biomarker panels on clinical samples.