Prevalence, Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Management of Microscopic Colitis

Microscopic colitis (MC), which is comprised of lymphocytic colitis and collagenous colitis, is a clinicopathological diagnosis that is commonly encountered in clinical practice during the evaluation and management of chronic diarrhea. With an incidence approaching the incidence of inflammatory bowel disease, physician awareness is necessary, as diagnostic delays result in a poor quality of life and increased health care costs. The physician faces multiple challenges in the diagnosis and management of MC, as these patients frequently relapse after successful treatment. This review article outlines the risk factors associated with MC, the clinical presentation, diagnosis and histologic findings, as well as a proposed treatment algorithm. Prospective studies are required to better understand the natural history and to develop validated histologic endpoints that may be used as end points in future clinical trials and serve to guide patient management.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Gut and Liver

• Publication date

  2017-07-04

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.5009/gnl17061PMID 28669150PMCID 5945253
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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