PermeAbility · PermeAbility - A non-invasive, side-effect-free diagnostic kit for intestinal disorders

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a form of acute inflammation to the small intestine that causes ulcers and extensive damage of the gut barrier causing it to rupture. This causes bleedings, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and a dramatic reduction of the quality of life. The intestinal barrier is normally a very well organised structure in which the cells are tightly connected maintaining the barrier. Moreover, IBD lesions compromise this intestinal organization and increases intestinal permeability, which is called leaky gut syndrome (LGS) being also a pre-disposing factor for several other health problems. LGS compromises digestion of food particles and removal of toxic waste products, and allows bacteria to ""leak"" through the intestine to the blood stream. Besides in IBD, LGS is also common in people with health conditions such as obesity, rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes. Even though IBD poses significant threats to a patients’ health and a heavy direct and indirect economic burden, diagnosis of this condition is still limited assessing indirect parameters like general inflammation markers in plasma and stool and evaluation based by comparison on the patients symptoms description. The direct measures are also performed but are restricted to very invasive methods like biopsy or solely qualitative like MRI and microcapsule colonoscopy. In this way it is reported in several clinical articles a clear need for new diagnostic methods in IBD reinforced by facts like 35% of the performed surgeries for treatment revealing unnecessary and 1.9 billion people worldwide at risk for early lesions and IBD development not being diagnosed. In this way clinical practice urges for new methods for the assessment of lesions in the intestinal wall. Lifetag’s has developed PermeAbility, a new proprietary test to measure intestinal permeability to better select patients at high risk of IBD , leading to better informed clinical decision making, diagnosis, and treatment.""