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Citrulline: A Plasmatic Marker to Assess and Monitor Small Bowel Crohn's Disease Patients

NCT00138879 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 54

Last updated 2005-12-15

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Citrulline is an amino acid produced in the intestine and in the liver, but the liver does not contribute significantly to circulating citrulline concentrations. The intestine is thus the only organ that normally releases significant amounts of citrulline into the blood. The investigators have designed a study looking at the value of measuring plasma citrulline concentration in patients with Crohn's disease and short bowel or normal intestinal length. Measuring the plasma citrulline concentration in short bowel patients may help to distinguish between patients who need permanent parenteral feeding from patients with just transient intestinal dysfunction. It may also help the investigators in understanding the small bowel intestinal length remaining and the absorptive integrity. In patients with normal intestinal length and Crohn's disease, it may be a reliable marker of small bowel damage and could be applied to establish therapeutic improvements. It has been demonstrated to strongly correlate (inversely) with severity on intestinal biopsies.

The investigators hypothesise that the plasma citrulline concentration is a marker for small bowel absorptive integrity and an appropriate surrogate for functional length of the small intestine.

Controlled data do not yet exist to establish the place of plasma citrulline in the assessment of small bowel function in man.

Conditions

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • St Mark's Hospital Foundation

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Alastair Forbes, Medicine · University College, London

  • Roy A. Sherwood, Biochemistry · King's College Hospital NHS Trust

  • Cinzia Papadia, Medicine · Imperial College University of London

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
80 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2003-05-31
Completion
2005-06-30

Countries

  • United Kingdom

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT00138879 on ClinicalTrials.gov