Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s disease are the two main types of inflammatory bowel disease. Treatment of ulcerative colitis is associated with improvement in symptoms, endoscopic appearance and histology. Treatment of ulcerative colitis has traditionally been targeted at control of symptoms and clinical remission. However, evidence suggests that only symptom control may be insufficient to achieve long-term outcome. Mucosal healing as treatment outcome has shown promising results in recent studies. Repeated assessment of mucosal healing requires repeated endoscopic procedures and may impose problems with added cost, complications associated with endoscopic procedures and patient acceptance. Non-invasive tests or surrogate markers may help clinicians to predict mucosal healing without the inconvenience of repeated endoscopic examinations. The ideal marker should be non-invasive, acceptable to patients, easily available and should have good sensitivity as well as specificity to detect...
