CRP and pediatric ulcerative colitis

摘要

I read with great interest the recent article by Turner et al. on the use of CRP and ESR in follow-up of pediatric patients with ulcerative colitis (UC).1 The article has very important data because CRP could be used as a non-invasive disease activity marker in those cases. Herein, there are some issues to be considered before some of the conclusions of the study could be drawn. The authors state that 104/288 children (36%) with moderate and severe disease activity had CRP of <5 mg/L. The item of my concern is medications that could affect CRP levels for example corticosteroids or antibiotics in those patients. Could the authors eliminate confounding effects of those drugs?