Gastrointestinal inflammation: focus on the vascular endothelium.
Ischemia of the intestine predominantly affects the small bowel and colon, and may ensue from a variety of causes, ranging from radiation enteritis to the use of drugs that affect the intestinal vasculature. Gut ischemia has historically been thought of as "large-vessel" disease, but microcirculatory pathology and ischemia-reperfusion injury is increasingly being implicated in gut infections and even in chronic idiopathic inflammatory processes involving the gut, such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.
Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine, Alta., Canada.
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D004730:Endothelium, Vascular / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005759:Gastroenteritis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans