Serum adropin levels are reduced in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases

Adropin is a novel peptide mostly associated with energy homeostasis and vascular protection. To our knowledge, there are no studies that investigated its relationship with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). The aim of this study was to compare serum adropin levels between 55 patients with IBD (30 Ulcerative colitis (UC) patients, 25 Crohn’s disease (CD) patients) and 50 age/gender matched controls. Furthermore, we explored adropin correlations with IBD severity scores, hsCRP, fecal calprotectin, fasting glucose and insulin levels. Serum adropin levels were significantly lower in patients with IBD in comparison with the control group (2.89 ± 0.94 vs 3.37 ± 0.60 ng/mL, P = 0.002), while there was no significant difference in comparison of UC patients with CD patients (P = 0.585). Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between adropin and fecal calprotectin (r = −0.303, P = 0.025), whereas in the total study population, we found a significant negative correlation with fasting glucose levels (r = −0.222, P = 0.023). A multivariable logistic regression showed that serum adropin was a significant predictor of positive IBD status when enumerated along with baseline characteristics (OR 0.455, 95% CI 0.251–0.823, P = 0.009). Our findings imply that adropin could be involved in complex pathophysiology of IBD, but further larger scale studies are needed to address these findings.