A routine blood test that goes on to measure a patient’s inflammation levels could very well improve the early diagnosis as well as the management of a wide range of debilitating autoimmune diseases.
The Systemic Inflammation Index- SII makes use of information from routine laboratory data so as to measure inflammation in the body, as well as examining this index in a new way can as well go ahead and provide vital answers, remarks Arduino Mangoni, who is the Strategic Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Flinders University’s College of Medicine and Public Health.
Autoimmune diseases, which happen to include a range of over 80 different illnesses, from inflammatory bowel disease- Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis to type 1 diabetes as well as multiple sclerosis, go on to occur when the immune system attacks the body.
The disease happens to affect almost 5% of people in Australia as well as New Zealand and often goes on to have symptoms that are indeed extremely distressing as well as debilitating, and, if at all they go undetected, can lead to serious organ as well as body tissue damage.
In a new study done by the University of Sassari’s Professor Mangoni and Italian Professor Angelo Zinellu, the researchers went ahead and carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis pertaining to multiple research articles on the probable usage of the index in diagnosing the presence as well as the severity of autoimmune diseases.
A major element for the successful management of these kinds of diseases is being able to identify them at a very early stage and then go ahead and offer targeted treatment, says Professor Mangoni.
Presently available biomarkers of inflammation, which are measured in the blood, happen to have limited diagnostic accuracy in many types of immunological diseases, thereby leading to harmful delays when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of such conditions.
The fact is that this issue has prompted the search for new as well as more accurate biomarkers of immunological diseases in order to enhance diagnosis and also the overall management.
Within these candidate biomarkers, those that happen to be derived from routine blood tests measuring the amount of specific cell types like neutrophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes have been very much studied in immunological diseases.
One of such kinds of hematological indices, the SII, is demonstrated to be particularly precise when it comes to the diagnosis of other conditions that are characterized by excess inflammation as well as dysregulated immunity, like the coronavirus disease 2019- COVID-19.
As per Professor Mangoni, their study pertaining to all the evidence so far goes on to confirm that it is highly likely that the SII happens to be superior to the presently available biomarkers and can as well be routinely made use of in clinical practice so as to optimally diagnose and also manage patients with immunological diseases.
