Genetic analysis has enabled doctors to divide ulcerative colitis into two types of disease, which respond differently to drugs, it has been announced.
Swedish researchers identified a total of 57 genes involved in the disease.
Reporting in Nature Communications, they say that the one kind of disease – described as UC1 – involves increased expression of genes involved in the recruitment of neutrophils.
More than 87% of patients in this group responded badly to treatment with two common biological drugs, the researchers report.
The findings come from a study of a mouse model and of samples from 102 human patients. The 57 genes had altered expression in both mice and humans.
Researcher Eduardo Villablance, of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, said: "We’ve managed to divide patients with ulcerative colitis into two molecularly distinct groups using a method that we believe can be used for other diseases too."
"We demonstrate the principle that it’s possible to combine datasets from mice and humans to group previously indistinguishable patients. The results provide new knowledge on inflammatory bowel diseases and can contribute to the more tailored treatment of ulcerative colitis."
Conserved transcriptomic profile between mouse and human colitis allows unsupervised patient stratification. Nature Communications 28 June 2019; doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-10769-x.
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