Searchable abstracts of presentations at key conferences in endocrinology
Endocrine Abstracts (2004) 8 P18

SFE2004 Poster Presentations Cytokines and growth factors (8 abstracts)

Modulation of the circulating insulin-like growth factor system in patients with gastrointestinal inflammation

I Baricevic 1 , O Nedic 1 , DR Jones 2 & JA Nikolic 1


1Institute for the Application of Nuclear Energy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro; 2The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.


Insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) and their binding proteins (IGFBPs) have important metabolic roles in the human body. IGFBP-3 (40 and 45 kD glycoforms) is the most abundant in serum, whereas IGFBP-2 (34 kD) and IGFBP-1 (29 kD) are present at lower concentrations.

Most inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are characterised by a cytokine- mediated inflammatory reaction, malnutrition and catabolism. The aim of this work was to detect possible changes in the circulating IGF/IGFBP system in patients with gastrointestinal inflammations of various etiology: Crohn's disease (n=17), colitis ulcerosa (n=16), gastritis (n=13), duodenitis errosiva (n=2), gastrointestinal candidiasis (n=2), rotaviral enteritis (n=19), adenoviral infection (n=21) and inflammations of unknown cause (n=2). Most patients in the first four groups were positive when tested for Helicobacter pylori.

Serum concentrations of IGF-I and IGF-II were determined by radioimmunoassay. IGFBPs were analysed by ligand-affinity blotting and immunoblotting using anti-IGFBP-3 or anti-IGFBP-2 antibodies.

Serum levels of IGF-I and IGF-II in patients were significantly lower than in healthy people (p< 0.05). The IGFBP pattern, detected by ligand-affinity blotting, in most cases demonstrated decreased IGFBP-3 and increased IGFBP-2. IGFBP-1 and IGFBP-4 were increased in some patients. Immunoblotting with the anti-IGFBP-3 antibody confirmed a reduced amount of intact IGFBP-3 in sera from the majority of the patients together with an increased presence of immunoreactive IGFBP-3 fragments (30, 20 and 15 kD in size). Immunoblotting with an anti-IGFBP-2 antibody indicated increased amounts of both native IGFBP-2 and a fragment (20 kD in size) in most patients' sera.

The results indicate that patients with inflammatory gastrointestinal disease exhibit a serious disbalance in their circulating IGF system. These observed alterations may help in the understanding of the metabolic consequences of the inflammation and perhaps in predicting the efficiency of recovery.

Volume 8

195th Meeting of the Society for Endocrinology joint with Diabetes UK and the Growth Factor Group

Society for Endocrinology 

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