Ziade F, et al. - Researchers involved 190 inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) subjects (ie, 97 ulcerative colitis [UC], 87 Crohn’s disease [CD] and 6 IBD unclassified) from Eastern Denmark and selected 52 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) known to be linked to IBD, to identify and evaluate the efficacy of biochemical markers at diagnosis, to prognosticate disease course and also to examine the effects of genotype on biochemical markers of inflammation. They observed a higher C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and platelet count at diagnosis in extensive UC sufferers but no changes in CD cases. They also found a low albumin level with an increased risk of surgery in both UC and CD subjects and increased use of azathioprine and anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha use. The patient’s genotype likely to affect the inflammatory response as one SNP (rs4986791 in the TLR-4 locus) and 2 SNPs (rs6785049 in the Pregnane-x-receptor gene and rs10500264 in the SLCA10 gene) were observed correlated with a change in albumin and hemoglobin and verifying that albumin might be a marker of severe disease course.