Sa1246 Long Term Assessment of Clinical Response to Adalimumab Therapy in Refractory Ulcerative Colitis

Right: AGCCACATCGCTCAGACAC. Descriptive statistics were used as means and standard deviations.Kruskal-Wallis was used to test differences among groups, and Chi-square to assess the association between SPARC gene expression and clinical features.The Odds Ratio (OR) was used for evaluating the association.The statistical package SPSS v.19 was used to perform the analysis.Results: Fifty-seven percent of the patient with UC were female.The expression of the DEFA5 gene was significantly increased in the colonic mucosa of patients with UC active compared to the control group (P=0.002) and UC in remission group (P=0.04).Furthermore a significant difference was found in the expression between the UC remission group and the control group (P=0.009).On the other hand, an upregulation of the DEFA6 gene was also observed in the UC active group compared with the control group (P=0.0001) as well as in the remission UC group as compared to the control group (P=0.001).Finally, a significant association was found between the high expression of DEFA6 and a favorable response to medical treatment (P<0.05,OR=0.20) and the presence of histological activity (P=0.01,OR: 11.4).The DEFA5 gene was also associated with the histological activity (P=0.01,OR=11.08).Conclusion: The expression of the DEFA5 and DEFA6 genes were increased in patients with UC, this might indicate that an underlying defense mechanism that increases the production of the antimicrobial peptides (defensins) in order to decrease the bacterial invasion in the colonic mucosa.