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This review is an update to the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Committee on Minority Affairs and Cultural Diversity's paper on colorectal cancer (CRC) in African Americans published in 2005. Over the past 10 years, the incidence and mortality rates of CRC in the United States has steadily declined. However, reductions have been strikingly much slower among African Americans who continue to have the highest rate of mortality and lowest survival when compared with all other racial groups. The reasons for the health disparities are multifactorial and encompass physician and patient barriers. Patient factors that contribute to disparities include poor knowledge of benefits of CRC screening, limited access to health care, insurance status along with fear and anxiety. Physician factors include lack of knowledge of screening guidelines along with disparate recommendations for screening. Earlier screening has been recommended as an effective strategy to decrease observed disparities; currently the ACG and American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopists recommend CRC screening in African Americans to begin at age 45. Despite the decline in CRC deaths in all racial and ethnic groups, there still exists a significant burden of CRC in African Americans, thus other strategies including educational outreach for health care providers and patients and the utilization of patient navigation systems emphasizing the importance of screening are necessary. These strategies have been piloted in both local communities and Statewide resulting in notable significant decreases in observed disparities.

Psychological interventions have been designed and implemented effectively in a wide range of medical conditions, including Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD). The psychological treatments for IBS and IBD with the strongest evidence base include: cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and mindfulness-based therapies. The evidence for each of these therapies is reviewed here for both IBS and IBD. In general, there is a stronger and larger evidence base to support the use of psychological interventions in IBS compared with IBD. This is likely due to the high level of psychiatric comorbidity associated with IBS and the involvement of the stress-response in symptom presentation of IBS. Further research in psychosocial interventions for IBD is necessary. Finally, the importance of conceptualizing both IBS and IBD in a biopsychosocial model is discussed and several resources for accessing Clinical Health Psychology materials and referrals are provided.

Traditional treatments for intermediate or advanced stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) such as transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) and anti-angiogenesis therapies were developed to starve tumor blood supply. A new approach of normalizing structurally and functionally abnormal tumor vasculature is emerging. While TACE improves survival in selected patients, the resulting tumor hypoxia stimulates proliferation, angiogenesis, treatment resistance and metastasis, which limits its overall efficacy. Vessel normalization decreases hypoxia and improves anti-tumor immune infiltrate and drug delivery. Several pre-clinical agents aimed at normalizing tumor vasculature in HCC appear promising. Although anti-angiogenic agents with vessel normalizing potential have been trialed in advanced HCC with modest results, to date their primary intention had been to starve the tumor. Judicious use of anti-angiogenic therapies is required to achieve vessel normalization yet avoid excessive pruning of vessels. This balance, termed the normalization window, is yet uncharacterized in HCC. However, the optimal class, dose and schedule of vascular normalization agents, alone or in combination with other therapies needs to be explored further.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), one of the most lethal cancers worldwide, is associated with two main types of morphologically distinct precursors-pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN) and intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN). Although the progression of PanIN into invasive cancer has been well characterized, there remains an urgent need to understand the biology of IPMNs, which are larger radiographically detectable cystic tumors. IPMNs comprise a number of subtypes with heterogeneous histopathologic and clinical features. Although frequently remaining benign, a significant proportion exhibits malignant progression. Unfortunately, there are presently no accurate prognosticators for assessing cancer risk in individuals with IPMN. Moreover, the fundamental mechanisms differentiating PanIN and IPMN remain largely obscure, as do those that distinguish IPMN subtypes. Recent studies, however, have identified distinct genetic profiles between PanIN and IPMN, providing a framework to better understand the diversity of the precursors for PDA. Here, we review the clinical, biological, and genetic properties of IPMN and discuss various models for progression of these tumors to invasive PDA.

Elimination diets have been used for many years to treat irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). These approaches had fallen out of favor until a recent resurgence, which was based on new randomized controlled trial (RCT) data that suggested it might be effective. The evidence for the efficacy of dietary therapies has not been evaluated systematically. We have therefore conducted a systematic review to examine this issue. MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register were searched up to December 2013. Trials recruiting adults with IBS, which compared any form of dietary restriction or addition of an offending food group in patients already on a restricted diet vs. placebo, control therapy, or \"usual management\", were eligible. Dichotomous symptom data were pooled to obtain a relative risk of remaining symptomatic after therapy as well as the number needed to treat with a 95% confidence interval. We identified 17 RCTs involving 1,568 IBS patients that assessed elimination diets. Only three RCTs involving 230 patients met our eligibility criteria, all of which evaluated different approaches, and thus a meta-analysis could not be conducted. More evidence is needed before generally recommending elimination diets for IBS patients.

Blood-based proteins might be an attractive option for early detection of colorectal cancer (CRC), but individually they are unlikely to achieve the diagnostic performance required for population based screening. We aimed at summarizing current evidence of diagnostic performance of signatures based on multiple proteins for early detection of CRC. A systematic literature review adhering to the PRISMA (preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis) guidelines was performed. PubMed and Web of Science databases were searched for potentially relevant studies published until 28th August, 2017. Relevant studies were identified by predefined eligibility criteria. Estimates of indicators of diagnostic performance such as sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the curve (AUC), along with information on validation and other key methodological procedures were extracted. Study quality was assessed by a QUADAS-2 (Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2) instrument tool. Thirty six eligible studies with numbers of CRC cases ranging from 23 to 512 and the number of proteins included in signatures ranged from 3 to 13 were identified. Reported Youden's Index and AUC ranged from 0.19 to 0.95 and from 0.62 to 0.996, respectively. However most studies, especially those reporting better diagnostic performance, were conducted in clinical rather than screening setting and many studies lacked any internal or external validation of identified algorithm. Blood-based tests using signatures of multiple proteins may be a promising approach for non-invasive CRC screening. However, promising signatures identified in clinical settings still require rigorous evaluation in large studies conducted in true screening setting.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common, heterogeneous disorder characterized by abdominal pain associated with changes in bowel habits. The pathogenesis of IBS is multifactorial and may relate to alterations in the gut microbiota, changes in visceral sensation and motility, and genetic and environmental factors. Administration of systemic antibiotics may increase the risk of IBS by altering gastrointestinal homeostasis. Therapeutic interventions for IBS with diarrhea that are thought to target alterations in the gut microbiota include the nonsystemic antibiotic rifaximin, the medical food serum-derived bovine immunoglobulin, prebiotics, probiotics, and dietary modification. SYN-010 is a modified-release statin formulation that reduces methane production by Methanobrevibacter smithii and is currently in development for the treatment of patients with constipation-predominant IBS. Use of these interventions in the management of patients with IBS may function to restore a healthy gut microbiota and ameliorate symptoms of IBS.

Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a debilitating disease that leads to varying degrees of pancreatic endocrine and exocrine dysfunction. One of the most difficult symptoms of CP is severe abdominal pain, which is often challenging to control with available analgesics and therapies. In the last decade, total pancreatectomy with autologous islet cell transplantation has emerged as a promising treatment for the refractory pain of CP and is currently performed at approximately a dozen centers in the United States. While total pancreatectomy is not a new procedure, the endocrine function-preserving autologous islet cell isolation and re-implantation have made the prospect of total pancreatectomy more acceptable to patients and clinicians. This review will focus on the current status of total pancreatectomy with autologous islet cell transplant including patient selection, technical considerations, and outcomes. As the procedure is performed at an increasing number of centers, this review will highlight opportunities for quality improvement and outcome optimization.

Detection and complete removal of precancerous neoplastic polyps are central to effective colorectal cancer screening. The prevalence of neoplastic polyps in the screening population in the United States is likely >50%. However, most persons with neoplastic polyps are never destined to develop cancer, and do not benefit for finding and removing polyps, and may only be harmed by the procedure. Further 70-80% of polyps are diminutive (≤5 mm) and such polyps almost never contain cancer. Given the questionable benefit, the high-cost and the potential risk changing our approach to the management of diminutive polyps is currently debated. Deemphasizing diminutive polyps and shifting our efforts to detection and complete removal of larger and higher-risk polyps deserves discussion and study. This article explores three controversies, and emerging concepts related to endoscopic polyp resection. First, we discuss challenges of optical resect-and-discard strategy and possible alternatives. Second, we review recent studies that support the use of cold snare resection for ≥5 mm polyps. Thirdly, we examine current evidence for prophylactic clipping after resection of large polyps.