Dr Pranab Gyawali, Consultant Gastroenterologist
Published:
More than 14,000 people from 122 countries registered for UEG Week 2026 in Barcelona, Europe’s largest gastroenterology congress. There were 5,407 research abstracts across digestive health.
What encouraged me was seeing how much international work is going into Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. We still haven’t found a cure, but researchers are working on many of the questions my patients ask: which treatment will work for me, how do we know the bowel has healed, and could I ever safely stop treatment?
In this video, I share some of the themes that caught my attention.
New research I’ll be discussing next
The conference raised some questions I want to explore in more detail. I’ll cover individual studies in future VLOGs. The links here are to my earlier explanations if you would like some background first.
- Choosing biologics more precisely. New work on predicting early and longer term treatment response. I’ll look at what these findings add to the question of why biologics work for some people and not others.
- Understanding remission and relapse. Research on blood markers such as IL-10, and who might relapse after stopping a biologic. I’ll return to these findings separately. For background, see my earlier explanation of deeper remission.
- Learning from gut bacteria. New research on microbiome patterns and how IBD behaves. This follows the broader question in my earlier VLOG on predicting disease severity.
- Diet and nutrition. Further work on their role in IBD management, which I’ll discuss alongside what we already know. My previous Crohn’s diet review provides some background.
- New medicines and immune pathways. Further treatment research to explore in upcoming VLOGs. My earlier discussion of dual pathway treatment research explains one approach already being studied.
My view
I came away encouraged by how many different teams are working on questions that matter to people living with IBD. We have more treatment options than we used to, and this research is asking how to make better use of them for each person.
What interests me most is the possibility of choosing a treatment with more confidence and understanding more clearly whether it is doing its job. The newer blood and microbiome tests still need further study alongside established assessments, but I’m pleased to see this work moving forward. I’ll share the individual findings in upcoming VLOGs.
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