Category Archives: Gastroenterology

What Are The Most Common Gastrointestinal Disorders?

January 21, 2022

With symptoms ranging from fatigue to abdominal pain and discomfort, gastrointestinal disorders can present differently on a patient-by-patient basis, making these common conditions challenging to diagnose. An estimated 60-70 million Americans suffer from gastrointestinal (GI) disorders, in many cases unknowingly. Recent research published in Gastroenterology reports that over 40% of the global population has a functional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) – which has significant adverse effects on quality of life and health care use.

According to data from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, GI disorders account for close to 50 million hospital visits and 21.7 million hospital admissions per year; they also lead to nearly 250,000 deaths annually. Furthermore, the treatment and management of gastrointestinal disorders give rise to $141.8 billion in U.S. healthcare expenditure, signaling an urgent need for increased awareness and clinical interventions.

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Gut Bacteria Play a Role in Cancer Tumor Development

September 10, 2020

In recent years, the role of the gut microbiome in human health and its influence on human diseases – including different types of cancer – has garnered increasing attention. At the same time, its role in cancer treatment has become more apparent with burgeoning evidence of the positive effects associated with gut microbiome modulation, implicating that it may impact patient responses to various cancer therapies.

A growing emphasis on precision medicine makes furthered knowledge and understanding of the microbiome’s influence on immune responses and cancer imperative. The discovery of strategies for manipulating the microbiome, to thereby augment therapeutic responses, relies on understanding the specific factors that influence gut microbiome mechanisms. Although several species of intestinal bacteria have already been linked to the enhanced efficacy of immunotherapies, exactly how the microbiome is able to enhance anti-tumor immunity remains in question.

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Artificial Intelligence in Gastroenterology

October 25, 2019

“We’re now in an era that some consider an AI renaissance, with enormous amounts of computing power — unimaginable only a few decades ago — now available to institutions and even individual researchers. Machine learning algorithms and AI are performing feats once considered to be exclusive domains for humans.” –Sushovan Guha, MD, PhD

In recent years, the prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and other breakthrough computer technologies has seen significant growth in medicine. Utilized by radiologists, neurologists, pathologists, and many other specialists, artificial intelligence has greatly expanded human capabilities and proved incredibly useful in parsing and aggregating enormous amounts of medical data. The ability to use this data to learn by itself and improve on its capabilities via machine learning has made AI a constantly self-evolving resource. Deep learning (DL) – a subset of ML – has shown exceptional performance in image analysis through its use of the convolutional neural network (CNN), adding to the growing list of AI applications in healthcare and gastroenterology specifically.

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