Marietta Iacucci © ECCO

In 2021 the ECCO Endoscopy Workshop reached its 7^th edition, and it has now become a mainstay of the educational activities of ECCO. This year it moved online as a fully virtual meeting and was organised by the Education Committee (EduCom).

Participating speakers and chairs: Ralf Bisschops, Belgium; Bu'Hussain Hayee, UK; Rosanna Cannatelli, Italy; Marietta Iacucci, UK, Pierre Ellul, Malta

Take your study to the next level with the IBD National Study Group Meeting at the ECCO Congress

Uri Kopylov  © ECCO

One of the missions of the Clinical Research Committee of ECCO (ClinCom) is to facilitate innovative clinical research in the area of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD).

To promote international scientific collaboration among researchers from different European countries, ClinCom established the IBD National Study Group Meeting, which takes place at the annual ECCO Congress. With this great platform, ClinCom enables investigators to have their studies challenged and promoted at the same time. Before the meeting, investigators are invited to provide a study synopsis for their project, including background, design, objectives, outcome parameters, major inclusion and exclusion criteria, statistics and co-variates. Submitted projects are then reviewed by ClinCom and, if found feasible, discussed during the IBD National Study Group Meeting at the ECCO Congress.

The 5^th Advanced ECCO: EduCational COurse for Industry, organised by the Clinical Research Committee of ECCO (ClinCom), was one of the highlights of the educational programme during the ECCO’21 Congress and was held virtually, with live presentations and discussions. The course was aimed at our industry partners and had the broad goal of discussing the areas of IBD research of key importance in the immediate future. 

Yves Panis © ECCO

Precision medicine in IBD 

The ninth edition of the SciCom Workshop, held during the 16^th Congress of ECCO, was dedicated to recent advances in "Precision medicine in IBD", covering different aspects from disease prevention to prediction of disease course and therapeutic responses and potential strategies for disease cure.

The Educational Programme of the 17^th Congress of ECCO starts prior to the official start of the ECCO Congress and courses take place from February 16-18, 2022. These activities target ECCO’s different interest groups including young gastroenterologists, surgeons, paediatricians, pathologists, IBD Nurses, dietitians, allied health professionals and scientists.

An overview of these activities can be found below. Please note that courses/workshops may run concurrently. As these educational activities have a limited capacity, we encourage you to register at your earliest convenience.

The Scientific Programme of the 17^th Congress of ECCO provides attendees the unique opportunity to learn from the world’s leading specialists in the field of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. Held from Thursday to Saturday, February 17-19, 2022, the Scientific Programme is structured around basic science, translational medicine and clinical sessions. Additionally, it includes oral presentations of the 40 best abstracts of the Congress. The focus of all sessions is clinical practice founded on science with practical take home messages and, as every year, the congress registration fee includes access to all scientific sessions.

ECCO’22 Theme: Navigating the oceans of IBD

We look forward to welcoming you at the 17^th Congress of ECCO in Vienna!

Ignacio Catalán-Serra © Ignacio Catalán-Serra

Nuha Yassin  © ECCO

Dear ECCO friends,

First, we would like to thank you all for making the 16^th Congress of ECCO Virtual a great success.

The Virtual Congress Platform worked very efficiently, allowing top-quality online scientific sessions with lots of interaction and discussions and the participation of a very high number of ECCO Members from all over the world. Our Scientific Programme this year was centered around the topic “IBD Precise”, highlighting new advances in pathogenesis, diagnostics and novel therapies that are enabling progress towards customised treatment for IBD patients.

Luckily, the current situation is allowing the ECCO Office Team to make the necessary preparations to hold the upcoming 17^th Congress of ECCO on-site in Vienna in February 2022. There, the usual high-quality scientific and educational content will be complemented by a fantastic social and networking programme.

For your convenience, below we provide summaries of the top 10 winning Digital Oral Presentations (DOP) from the 16^th Congress.

We wish you a great return from your holidays and look forward to meeting you in person in Vienna!

Best wishes,

Ignacio and Nuha

6,798 delegates attended the 16^th Congress of ECCO Virtual

The 16^th Congress of ECCO Virtual – Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 2021, held on July 2-3 & 8-10, 2021, attracted a total number of 6,798 delegates from 104 different countries. Since the inaugural ECCO Congress in 2006 in Amsterdam, at which there were 350 delegates, participant numbers have steadily increased, as shown in the graph below. Despite the COVID-19 outbreak in the beginning of 2020, we are happy that this high number of delegates had the chance to participate in the ECCO’21 Virtual Congress.

ECCO Congress participation 2006-2021 © ECCO

Anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) therapy is frequently used in the treatment of Crohn’s Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC) in both adult and paediatric patients. Nevertheless, primary or secondary treatment failure of anti-TNFα treatment is not uncommon [1]. Both primary and secondary treatment failures are attributed either to pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and immunogenic factors or to adverse events in response to the specific agent [2]. In recent years, loss of response (LOR) during anti-TNFα treatment has commonly been approached through the use of therapeutic drug monitoring involving measurement of infliximab or adalimumab trough concentrations (TC) and anti-drug antibodies (ADAs). Therapeutic drug monitoring of anti-TNFα agents enables proper stratification of LOR into a specific type of LOR, with corresponding adjustment of treatment. In children, in line with findings in adults, it has consistently been shown that higher drug TC is associated with higher efficacy [3] and that LOR is most commonly attributable to either low TC or the development of anti-drug antibodies [4].

The educational programme of the 16^th Congress of ECCO is scheduled one week prior to the official start of the ECCO Congress and all educational courses take place from July 2-3, 2021. These activities target ECCO’s different interest groups including young gastroenterologists, surgeons, paediatricians, pathologists, IBD Nurses, dietitians, allied health professionals and scientists.

The scientific programme will be held from July 8-10, 2021 including Digital Oral Presentations. In addition we are pleased to announce that the titles of the abstract oral presentations are already included in the online programme.

An overview of these activities can be found below. In order to get more information please click on the respective course link. For ECCO'21 Virtual overlapping courses can be watched on-demand until end of October 2021. It is foreseen, that delegates who registered for educational courses and/or the scientific programme can claim their CME credits also for on-demand content. We encourage you to register at your earliest convenience.

We look forward to welcoming you at the 16^th Congress of ECCO Virtual!

Although the relationship between IBD and nutrition is of longstanding interest, the attention paid to it has increased dramatically in recent years, with the inclusion of nutritional interventions in ECCO Guidelines on both paediatric and adult Crohn’s Disease (and of course many other IBD guidelines), bespoke publications such as the ECCO perioperative dietary therapy topical review and a flowering of clinical interest in Crohn’s Disease-specific diets.

This clinical interest in nutritional issues in IBD is also reflected in the exceptional interest in a December 2020 educational article in the UEG Journal “Mistakes in…” series, namely “Mistakes in nutrition in IBD and how to avoid them” by the ECCO Members Joe Meredith, Kostas Gerasimidis and Richard Russell (ueg.eu/a/268). Basic and translational scientific studies of the pathogenesis of IBD have increasingly evaluated the role of nutrition and particularly its interaction with the microbiome.