This month in Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology

In this issue of Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, Ladanchuk et al. [1] show that drugs used for asthma may confound the diagnosis of Barrett’s esophagus. It is also possible that asthma medication may increase the risk for Barrett’s esophagus. In a study from southern Sweden [2], it has been shown that the number of patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding has decreased though the severity of bleeding had increased. Furthermore, the authors show that the increased use of drugs, which may cause bleeding, may rather affect the severity of the bleeding. An interesting study of gastroduodenal erosions in a population from China showed that these lesions are frequent and surprisingly no relation to Helicobacter pylori was found [3]. In a study from Australia [4], the authors studied eradication ofHelicobacter pylori in a mouse model and they used different doses of hyperimmune bovine colostrum, N-acatyl cysteine and zinc in combination with amoxicillin. They could show that this new method eradicates H. pylori effectively. Shimoyama et al. [5] used an immunological method to detect a Helicobacter pylori antigen in stool with monoclonal antibody before and after eradication therapy. This method, which means that the patient doesn’t have to visit the hospital, was comparable in results to urea breath test. Chromogranin A is known to be both reduced and elevated in different published patient groups in serum from patients with irritable bowel syndrome. El-Salhy et al. [6] could show that in duodenum and colon the number of positive cells for this molecule was reduced and they suggest that this could be a method to diagnose IBS in the future. Markó et al. [7] has studied immunoreactive urinary albumin (ir-uAlb) in patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) since it can be used to identify disease activity in patients with CD. They found with a specific high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method that ir-uAlb was increased in patients with active CD and suggest that this will be an ideal way to identify disease activity in these patients.We also present a cohort study with 426 naïve patients with CD from 13 European countries, where 247 had luminal CD [8]. The authors found that in 163 patients with mild to moderate disease, initial treatment was sufficient in the majority whereas the patients with more severe disease seldom could reach remission without more aggressive treatment. In a study from Denmark on long-term effects of infliximab, the authors found that of patients with acute ulcerative colitis (UC) about two-thirds of the patients can avoid colectomy and have a long-term prognosis which is excellent [9]. Environmental factors such as bad living conditions have been investigated as risk factor for patient with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In a Spanish study, it was found that high educational level and good economic status are risk factors whereas childhood upper respiratory infections and gastroenteritis were protective factors [10]. In a study from the UK [11], liver tissue from patients who underwent portal vein embolization (PVE) for colorectal liver metastases was analyzed. They did not find any evidence for liver regeneration following embolization that involves regeneration with hepatic stem cells. Looking at patients with submucosal invasive gastric cancer, the study from Sanomura et al. found five independent risk factors, which may allow expansion of the criteria for determining whether endoscopic resection has been curative [12]. Patients who had had liver transplants because of hepatitis C were found to have a higher rate of sustained virological response if they were treated with antiviral therapy for longer than 48 weeks [13]. Patients with liver disease often have anemia and bleeding due to portal hypertension. In a study from Turkey, 90.5% of patients studied had evidence of portal hypertension not only in the stomach but also in the small intestine. The authors suggest that this could be an extra cause of bleeding [14]. Patients with hepatitis C develop fibrosis, and authors from Norway compared the risk to develop fibrosis between different groups. They found that Pakistani patients had more fibrosis at the same age possible due to longer time of infection, diabetes mellitus, genotype 3 and more liver steatosis [15]. Terlipressin were found to be effective to increase water excretion in patients with cirrhosis Child–Pugh score B/C