TOPLINE:

Advanced therapies improved bowel urgency in 50.9% of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with a reduction in the severity of urgency. These improvements correlated with clinical, biochemical, and ultrasound remission.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a retrospective study at two Italian centres between April 2023 and April 2024 to evaluate the efficacy of advanced therapies in reducing bowel urgency in patients with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis (UC).
• They analysed data of 159 patients with IBD (median age, 36 years; 56% men) who initiated advanced therapies such as biologic drugs or small molecules; of them, 55 had Crohn's disease and 104 had UC.
• Bowel urgency was measured using the Numeric Rating Scale urgency score (NRS-us), where higher scores indicated more severe urgency.
• The primary endpoint was an improvement in bowel urgency, defined as achieving an NRS-us of 3 or less or a reduction of 2 or more points after induction therapy.
• Secondary endpoints included bowel urgency remission (defined as achieving an NRS-us of 1 or less) and the correlation between improvements in bowel urgency and clinical, biochemical (faecal calprotectin and C-reactive protein levels), and ultrasound markers of disease activity.

TAKEAWAY:

• Overall, 50.9% of patients achieved an improvement in bowel urgency, with a mean reduction of 2.3 points in the NRS-us, and 26.4% of patients reached bowel urgency remission, with no significant differences between patients with UC and those with Crohn's disease.
• At the end of the induction phase, among the 70 patients who achieved clinical remission, 51.4% experienced persistent bowel urgency, with a higher rate among patients with Crohn's disease (65.2%) than among those with UC (44.6%).
• Elevated levels of both faecal calprotectin and C-reactive protein were inversely correlated with improvements in bowel urgency (Pearson correlation coefficients, -0.32 and -0.30, respectively; P < .0001 for both).
• Bowel urgency remission significantly correlated with intestinal ultrasound remission (P = .0006).

IN PRACTICE:

"[Our] data support the integration of routine BU [bowel urgency] monitoring alongside ultrasound and fecal biomarkers in clinical practice, with the goal of achieving a more personalized, timely, and effective disease management strategy," the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Ferdinando D'Amico, IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital and Vita–Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy. It was published online on December 17, 2025, in United European Gastroenterology Journal.

LIMITATIONS:

The study was retrospective in nature, and potential selection bias may have occurred. The uneven distribution of patients across treatment groups limited direct comparisons between drugs. No long‑term follow‑up data were available; bowel urgency was assessed using patient‑reported measures rather than objective tools.

DISCLOSURES:

This study did not receive any specific funding. Several authors reported receiving consulting fees or honoraria for lectures and serving as speakers, consultants, or advisory board members for various companies including AbbVie, Pfizer, and Roche.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.