Shedding light on the dark side of microscopic colitis

The term microscopic colitis (MC) was coined to describe a clinical and pathological entity characterized by three elements [1]: (a) a clinical history of chronic watery (nonbloody) diarrhea; (b) a normal or almost normal endoscopic appearance of the colon; and c) a peculiar histological pattern [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It is important to keep in mind that the term MC was in effect a clinical and endoscopic definition, i.e., an “umbrella term” that included two pathological entities called lymphocytic colitis (LC) and collagenous colitis (CC) [8]; for this reason, the term MC has little or no significance from a histopathological point of view.