A STAT need for human immunologic studies to understand inflammatory bowel disease.

In this issue of The American Journal of Gastroenterology, Mudter et al. present a study elucidating a potential role for STAT proteins in the pathogenesis of the human inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). The importance of this study lies in the methodology, as molecular biology was applied to humans to describe expression and activation of STATs in intestinal mucosal cells from IBD patients. The speculative roles for the family members/STAT1 and STAT3 suggest a divergence between human IBD and immunologic hypotheses derived from murine models. This work provides an example of why technology and experiments to understand human immunology are ultimately our best strategy to develop therapies and biomarkers for IBD.