Plasma Levels of Glucagon-like Peptide-2 and Dyspepsia in Patients With Extraintestinal Cancer During Chemotherapy

The complications of anticancer treatment threaten the effectiveness of therapy because they lead to dose reduction, increase healthcare costs, and impair patients' quality of life. Gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are the most frequent side effects of antineoplastic chemotherapy behind bone-marrow depression, with nausea and vomiting representing the mainly referred ones.

Gastrointestinal (GI) mucositis, which represents injury of the rest of the alimentary tract beyond oral mucositis, is becoming recognized increasingly as a toxicity associated with many standard-dose chemotherapy regimens. Although clinicians consider them "minor complaints", many patients (40-100%) treated with chemotherapy and/or exposed to ionizing radiation suffer from such a disease. After chemotherapy, GI mucositis is most prominent in the small intestine, but it also occurs in the esophagus, stomach, and large intestine. The GI symptoms related to mucositis mimic those from other GI disease (such as dyspepsia, reflux disease or abdominal pain and diarrhea). Alimentary tract mucositis increases morbility and mortality and contribute to rising health care cost.

The comprehension of pathophysiology will shed light on the rationale for targeting specific pathways and so for the use of specific agents for prevention and treatment. Since the role of chemotherapy in the onset of GI motility disorders in addition to minor GI complaints has not been clarified yet. Understanding the pathophysiology of mucositis, its measures and scores, are essential for progress in research and care direct at this common side-effect of anticancer therapy. Currently, there is not strong evidence to support a recommendation for and against the use of certain agents (mucosal surface protectants, antiinflammatory or antimicrobial agents, growth factors, etc).