Concerns about JAVMA News article
We would like to comment on the JAVMA News article in the November 15, 2021, issue “Taking the chronic out of enteropathies.”1 The article discusses the use of a panel of new serologic tests for inflammatory bowel disease, relying heavily on a research paper published in 2021 in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine (JVIM) by Estruch et al.2 However, the News article fails to mention that the results of this study have been questioned due to lack of reporting and analytical assay validation, faulty study design, misinterpretation of data, and failure to disclose key financial conflicts of interest by the study authors, which ultimately led to retraction of this article by the journal, a rare action taken only once by JVIM within the last 15 years.
While Dr. Johnson is quoted in the article concerning patients in which the panel was supposedly clinically useful, we are aware of other patients for which the panel led to misdiagnosis and initiation of inappropriate therapy. For example, a dog with histoplasmosis was misdiagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease based on this panel and treated with immunosuppressive agents, leading to dramatic deterioration and euthanasia. Thus, further research is needed before the panel should be used for routine diagnosis and management.
Other details about our concerns regarding the retracted article are published in a letter to the editor in JVIM,3 and we hope our concerns stimulate further dialogue. Given that the study discussed in this News article was retracted, we wanted to add some notes of caution to the News article published in JAVMA.
References
- 2. ↑
Estruch J, Johnson J, Ford S, Yoshimoto S, Mills T, Bergman P. Utility of the combined use of 3 serologic markers in the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic enteropathies in dogs. J Vet Intern Med. 2021;35(3):1306–1315.
- 3. ↑
Langlois DK, Tolbert MK, Webb CB, et al. Letter regarding “Utility of the combined use of 3 serologic markers in the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic enteropathies in dogs.” J Vet Intern Med. 2021;35(6):2567–2569. doi:10.1111/jvim.16303
