Digestive tract damage during graft-versus-host reaction (GVHR) causes high morbidity and mortality. Diagnosis is often late because biopsies are performed when clinical signs are severe and pathologic markers of early inflammatory lesions are lacking. Eosinophils are inflammatory cells, cytotoxic in vitro to digestive epithelium; they are found in biopsy specimens taken during acute flare-ups ...

Bile acids (BAs) are not only digestive surfactants but also important cell signaling molecules, which stimulate several signaling pathways to regulate some important biological processes. The bile-acid-activated nuclear receptor, farnesoid X receptor (FXR), plays a pivotal role in regulating bile acid, lipid and glucose homeostasis as well as in regulating the inflammatory responses, barrier f...

Digestive fistulas are a major complication after digestive surgery. Anastomotic leakage increases the hospitalization time, the prognosis and survival rate after colorectal surgical interventions. The factors involved are either systemic (determined by the patients' co-morbidities), or local (vicious surgical technique or the injuries produced by the disease that requires the anastomosis). Alt...

A new Trypanosoma cruzi stock isolated from a patient in the chronic phase of Chagas' disease with the digestive and cardiac form of the disease was characterized by experimental infection in isogenic, susceptible, A/Sn strain mice. Parasitemia curves showed up to 1.7 x 10(6) parasites/ml and no mortality was observed up to 300 days post infection. Specific IgM was found in mice in the acute ph...

In its acute forms, pancreatitis is a severe and frequently fatal disease, characterized biochemically by intrapancreatic activation of very powerful digestive enzymes.'0 The activation of these enzymes results in hydrolytic cleavage of cellular structures followed by generalized pancreatic necrosis, peritonitis, and vasomotor collapse."'8 In its chronic forms, pancreatitis is a disabling disea...