GI news to know: gastric balloon safety, microbiome conference, IBD guideline

Last month’s highlights in gastroenterology news included important safety updates, new guideline recommendations and a unique conference focused on frontiers in microbiome research.

In case you missed it, the editors of Healio Gastroenterology have compiled a recap of our top 6 most popular articles from August.

'Normal' bowel habits differ between men, women

For the first time, researchers characterized normal bowel habits for adults in the United States.

For normal bowel frequency, they confirmed the commonly accepted “3 and 3” metric — a range of three bowel movements per day to three bowel movements per week — and for normal bowel consistency, they found that men and women showed different criteria. Further, they identified key demographic risk factors for abnormal bowel habits, which notably included Hispanic ethnicity. Read more

FDA safety alert: Five deaths after intragastric balloon insertions

The FDA issued a safety alert warning health care providers that since 2016, five patients who were treated with liquid-filled intragastric balloons for obesity died unexpectedly. Read more

NIH features early progress in understanding microbiome’s role in IBD

Last month at the NIH conference marking the culmination of the 10-year Human Microbiome Project, several researchers shared their early findings on the link between the gut microbiota and inflammatory bowel disease, including their role in disease activity, diagnosis and future therapeutics. Read more

AGA releases guideline on therapeutic drug monitoring in IBD

The AGA has issued new guideline recommendations on therapeutic drug monitoring in patients with inflammatory bowel disease treated with anti-TNF agents and thiopurines. Read more

Smartphone app could detect pancreatic cancer using ‘selfies’

A new smartphone app called BiliScreen showed promise for pancreatic cancer screening by analyzing signs of jaundice in photos of a user’s eyes.

Developers hope this tool can help facilitate earlier detection of pancreatic cancer, which has one of the worst survival rates, in at-risk individuals. Read more

Nonceliac wheat sensitivity shows long-term persistence in patients

Patients diagnosed with nonceliac wheat sensitivity continued to experience symptoms when exposed to wheat over a median study period of more than 8 years, leading researchers to conclude that the condition is persistent. Read more