Review Article The Novel Crohn’s Disease Marker Anti-GP2 Antibody Is Associated with Ileocolonic Location of Disease

Copyright © 2013 Valentina Somma et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Crohn’s disease (CD) is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that can affect the whole gastrointestinal tract.The ileocolonic variant of CD, an inflammation of both the ileum and the large intestine, accounts for up to 50 % of the cases with CD, whereas Crohn’s ileitis affecting the ileum is diagnosed in about 30%. Crohn’s colitis, which is confined to the large intestine and accounts for the remaining 20%, is difficult to distinguish from the large bowel inflammation seen in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). The pathogenesis of CD is not yet completely understood. Autoimmunity is one factor that can partake in the triggering or modulation of inflammatory processes in IBD. The major zymogen-granule membrane glycoprotein 2 (GP2) has been recently identified as a