Colorectal cancer in inflammatory bowel disease: molecular and clinical features.

The two forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, are characterized by chronic and relapsing inflammation of the intestines. Initiating events presumably occur well before patients are symptomatic. Evidence gathered over the past decade from both IBD patients and animal models of intestinal inflammation have confirmed that IBD represents complex heterogenic forms of diseases, influenced by a combination of environmental, genetic, and immunologic factors working in concert to produce exaggerated immune responses, resulting in chronic and remitting inflammation.