A Spanish research team who gained fame for introducing the MRI-based formula that grades the activity of luminal Crohn’s disease in 2011, recently developed and tested a fresh, easier adaptation of their MRI score that leads to a swifter assessment.

“The simplified version of the MaRIA [Magnetic Resonance Index of Activity] score allows a faster and easier assessment of inflammation and quantification of severity in Crohn’s disease by keeping high accuracy for diagnosis and therapeutic response,” Ingrid Ordás, MD, said at the annual Digestive Disease Week. She pointed the chief benefit of the simplified MaRIA to be a “less time-consuming calculation that is not confounded by missing segments.”

The derivation results were included in the data reported by Dr. Ordás, comprising of 98 patients enrolled in two different prospective studies, and another prospective validation cohort of 37 patients.  The totalities of patients were assessed by clinicians at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, and therefore additional validation with patients registered at other sites is required, Dr. Ordás commented in an interview.

More data on the increased sensitivity and specificity of Crohn’s disease assessment with the simplified MaRIA could make it a contender to replace endoscopy as the model tool for evaluating disease process and severity in luminal Crohn’s disease patients.