OU article in the Journal Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Assistant Professor Patricia Wren, of the School of Health Sciences, and her coworkers recently reported on the "Identification of Symptom Domains in Ulcerative Colitis that Occur Frequently During Flares and are Responsive to Changes in Disease Activity," in the open access online journal Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, (volume 6, article 69, 2008). They conclude that "The results of our study provide quantitative evidence that a subset of the additional symptoms identified in our previous work with UC [Ulcerative Colitis] patient focus groups are reasonable choices for further development as part of a new index to assess UC disease activity. These additional symptoms have great value because they were identified through patient input, which allows us to capture a complete picture of disease activity in patients with ulcerative colitis. The finding that a number of symptoms used at this time in common UC disease activity indices are rarely present in UC flares and/or are less responsive to change furthers the point that by using existing measures we may not be optimally assessing a patient's UC activity. We expect that the future combination of improved survey questions for UC activity assessment and biomarkers of UC inflammation will result in better assessment of disease activity and therefore better care for patients than is possible with currently available indices."