BACKGROUND/AIMS To investigate if restoration of esophago-intestinal or esophago-gastric continuity with a jejunal pouch after total or proximal gastrectomy has clinical benefits. METHODS We reviewed all relevant reports published after 1990 that dealt with the clinical results of reconstruction with a jejunal pouch after total and proximal gastrectomies and correlated those findings with res...

The effect of coating monosodium urate crystals (MSU) with low density lipoprotein (LDL), postulated previously as a major regulator of gouty inflammation, was studied in a neutrophil chemiluminescence (CL) assay and an air pouch model of inflammation induced by MSU. LDL crystalline coating abrogated the neutrophil CL response but, in contrast, had no inhibitory effect on leucocyte accumulation...

Total restorative proctocolectomy with ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (RP/IPAA) has become the standard of care for the surgical treatment of ulcerative colitis. Despite its correlation with an excellent quality of life and favorable long-term outcomes, RP/IPAA has been associated with several complications. Prolapse of the ileoanal pouch is a rare and debilitating complication that should be con...

Ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA) is the standard restorative procedure after proctocolectomy in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) who require colectomy. The ileal pouch is susceptible to a variety of insults including mechanical injury, ischemia, fecal stasis, and infectious agents. In addition, the development of recurrent and idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease and neoplasia may occu...

Objective Rofecoxib (Vioxx), the first COX-2 selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), was recently withdrawn from the market due to the increased risk of acute myocardial infarction. The precise mechanism responsible for this phenomenon still remains unknown. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) is a cytokine, possibly most responsible for mortality in patients with acute myocardi...

Understanding how uric acid crystals provoke inflammation is crucial to improving our management of acute gout. It is well known that urate crystals stimulate monocytes and macrophages to elaborate inflammatory cytokines, but the tissue response of the synovium is less well understood. Microarray analysis of mRNA expression by these lining cells may help to delineate the genes that are modulate...