The Hasselt Appendicitis Immunology and Environmental cohort Study: The HAPPIEST cohort Study (R-3574)

Acute appendicitis is one of the most common abdominal emergencies in the Western world. It is known to occur at all ages but shows a peak incidence in the second and third decades of life, with a life time risk of almost 10 percent. Although its occurrence is frequent and mortality due to appendicitis is low, an unacceptable degree of complications remains. Besides the incidence of ill health, appendectomy is also associated with high costs and the discomfort of hospitalization and surgery. The primary objective is to show the relative importance of specific host factors of the innate immunity, environmental factors and micro-organisms associated with appendicitis, with the ultimate goal to develop future preventive and therapeutic interventions. To this objective, a comparison will be made between patients and healthy controls. The design of the study is a prospective cohort study, on which a multivariate analysis will be performed. The cohort will include 300 appendectomy patients and 300 healthy controls of a similar age mean. Both groups will be asked to give blood samples for DNA isolation and immunoglobulin determination, serum samples for serology and feces samples for microbiome analysis. From the patients, tissue samples will also be collected for later immunologic and microbiologic research. In the third part of the study a subpopulation, existing of all patients and controls that are 18 years or older, will be asked to donate blood samples for in vitro immunologic research.

Keywords:Appendicitis, Genetics, IMMUNE THERAPY, Microbiology

Disciplines:Basic sciences, Clinical sciences, Translational sciences