Researchers have developed a blood test to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease that is designed to predict whether patients will develop mild or severe disease.

They hope it will enable patients at risk of aggressive disease to have earlier treatment and prevent overtreatment in those expected to have less severe disease.

Currently, although disease courses vary markedly between patients, treatment uses a “one-size fits all approach” that cannot provide safe, effective and cost-efficient therapy for every patient, the authors say.

The study builds on earlier work from the same UK researchers who discovered that patients with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis could be classified as having aggressive or mild disease according to how a particular group of T-cells (CD8) were functioning.