A prospective study of first attacks of inflammatory bowel disease and infectious colitis : histologic course during the 1st year after presentation

Schumacher G. Kollberg B, Sandstedt B. A prospective study of first attacks of inflammatory bowel disease and infectious colitis. Histologic course during the 1st year after presentation. Scand J Gastroenterol 1994:29:318-332.To investigate the possibilities of differentiating between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and infectious colitis on histologic grounds, a prospective histologic study of 105 patients with a first attack of colitis was undertaken. Rectal biopsies were performed on four occasions during 1 year. The strongest predictor of IBD was basal plasmacytosis. followed by more than two vertical crypt branches per medium-power field, crypt distortion, villous mucosa, and mucosal atrophy. These signs were rarely found among patients with infectious colitis. Their frequency increased with the interval between initial symptoms and the first biopsy. To study the development of histologic features in the absence of treatment, the IBD patients were divided into groups depending on this interval. Foca...