An international team of researchers has announced the discovery of genetic markers linked with ulcerative colitis risk.

The team led by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine say that their findings may be helpful in understanding the biological pathways involved in the disease, and thus may lead to the development of new treatments that specifically target them.

Ulcerative colitis is a chronic, relapsing disorder that causes inflammation and ulceration in the inner lining of the rectum and large intestine. Its most common symptoms are diarrhoea (oftentimes bloody) and abdominal pain.

Just like Crohn’s disease, another chronic gastrointestinal inflammatory disorder, ulcerative colitis is also known as a major form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

"Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are chronic conditions that impact the day-to-day lives of patients," Nature magazine quoted senior author of the study Richard H. Duerr, M.D., associate professor of medicine and human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health, as saying.

"IBD is most often diagnosed in the teenage years or early adulthood. While patients usually don’t die from IBD, affected individuals live with its debilitating symptoms during the most productive years of their lives," the researcher added.

With a view to finding factors specific for ulcerative colitis, the researchers performed a genome-wide association study of hundreds of thousands of genetic markers using DNA samples from 1,052 individuals with ulcerative colitis and pre-exisiting data from 2,571 controls, all of European ancestry and residing in North America.