Background: It is challenging to distinguish between functional and organic colonic disorders because they can exhibit similar symptoms, with the exception of organic disorders that exhibit red flag symptoms including anemia, weight loss or bleeding per rectum. Therefore, a number of experiments were conducted to identify non-invasive methods for distinguishing between organic and functional colonic diseases.
Aim of the Work: Show the ability of plasma M2-pyruvate kinase as a new bio-marker for distinguishing between functional and organic bowel diseases and to evaluate its effectiveness in the latter.
Patients and Methods: Eighty participants were divided up into four groups: Group I: twenty individuals with functional disoders, which served as a control group. Group II: Twenty patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. Group III: Twenty patients with colonic polyps. Group IV: 20 colon cancer patients.
Results: The findings demonstrated that, at a cut-off level > 3 U/ml, serum M2-PK exhibited 100% specificity and 93.3% sensitivity in distinguishing between functional and organic colonic diseases. Additionally, at a cut-off level of > 12 U/ml, it demonstrated 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity in differentiating between benign (colonic polyp) and malignant lesions (CRC). Serum M2 PK and CEA showed highly substantial positive associations, and their combination showed improved sensitivity and specificity.
Conclusion: Serum M2-PK is able to distinguish between organic and functional bowel diseases. In order to minimize unnecessary endoscopic procedures, it can also be regarded as a non-invasive marker for screening for various organic colonic diseases .