Whole Gut Lavage Fluid Analysis: A Minimally Invasive Method for Study of Mucosal Immunity and Inflammation

Studies of intestinal mucosal immunity and inflammation are limited by the relative inaccessibility of most of the small intestine. Any new method of studying mucosal immunity and inflammation in patients should be minimally invasive, cost-effective, and provide information not readily available using current methods. Gaspari et al. (1 ) described gut lavage with 3 to 4 L of nonabsorbable, commercially available polyethylene glycol (PEG)-based bowel cleansing fluid as a method for analyzing human intestinal secretions for antibody content. Peroral gastrointestinal (GI) lavage is widely used to cleanse the GI tract prior to colonoscopy, barium enema examination, or colonic surgery. Whole gut lavage fluid (WGLF) therefore often becomes available without subjecting a patient to any additional investigation. This method is also often more acceptable to healthy volunteers than almost any other method of studying small intestinal secretions. Over the past decade, we have found that WGLFs from patients (both adults and children) suffering from a variety of intestinal diseases contain immunoglobulins (Igs) and antibodies, hemoglobin, plasma-derived proteins, cytokines, inflammatory cells, and their granule-derived proteins and growth factors (2 ,3 ). In this chapter, we describe our experience of the use of WGLF to study mucosal immunity and inflammation.