Paper
22 April 2016 Application of fluorescent tracer agent technology to point-of-care gastrointestinal permeability measurement
Richard B. Dorshow, Jeng-Jong Shieh, Thomas E. Rogers, Carla Hall-Moore, Nurmohammad Shaikh, Michael Talcott, Phillip I. Tarr
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Abstract
Gut dysfunction, often accompanied by increased mucosal permeability to gut contents, frequently accompanies a variety of human intestinal inflammatory conditions. These disorders include inflammatory bowel diseases (e.g., Crohn’s Disease) and environmental enteropathy and enteric dysfunction, a condition strongly associated with childhood malnutrition and stunting in resource poor areas of the world. The most widely used diagnostic assay for gastrointestinal permeability is the lactulose to mannitol ratio (L:M) measurement. These sugars are administered orally, differentially absorbed by the gut, and then cleared from the body by glomerular filtration in the kidney. The amount of each sugar excreted in the urine is measured. The larger sugar, lactulose, is minimally absorbed through a healthy gut. The smaller sugar, mannitol, in contrast, is readily absorbed through both a healthy and injured gut. Thus a higher ratio of lactulose to mannitol reflects increased intestinal permeability. However, several issues prevent widespread use of the L:M ratio in clinical practice. Urine needs to be collected over time intervals of several hours, the specimen then needs to be transported to an analytical laboratory, and sophisticated equipment is required to measure the concentration of each sugar in the urine. In this presentation we show that fluorescent tracer agents with molecular weights similar to those of the sugars, selected from our portfolio of biocompatible renally cleared fluorophores, mimic the L:M ratio test for gut permeability. This fluorescent tracer agent detection technology can be used to overcome the limitations of the L:M assay, and is amenable to point-of-care clinical use.
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Richard B. Dorshow, Jeng-Jong Shieh, Thomas E. Rogers, Carla Hall-Moore, Nurmohammad Shaikh, Michael Talcott, and Phillip I. Tarr "Application of fluorescent tracer agent technology to point-of-care gastrointestinal permeability measurement", Proc. SPIE 9723, Reporters, Markers, Dyes, Nanoparticles, and Molecular Probes for Biomedical Applications VIII, 97230A (22 April 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2211790
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CITATIONS
Cited by 2 patents.
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KEYWORDS
Point-of-care devices

Luminescence

Kidney

Statistical analysis

Absorption

Animal model studies

Diagnostics

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