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Background and Aims: The usefulness of anti-glycan antibodies alone or combined with anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae [ASCA] or perinuclear antineutrophil cytoplasmic [pANCA] antibodies for diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease [IBD], differentiation between Crohn's disease [CD] and ulcerative colitis [UC], disease stratification including IBD phenotype, and also for determination of the course of the disease, remain unclear. Methods: A large panel of serological anti-glycan carbohydrate antibodies, including antimannobioside IgG antibodies [AMCA], anti-chitobioside IgA [ACCA], anti-laminaribioside IgG antibodies [ALCA], anti-laminarin [anti-L] and anti-chitine [anti-C] were measured in the serum from a cohort of 195 patients with IBD] [107 CD and 88 UC]. The respective accuracy of isolated or combined markers for diagnosis, disease differentiation, stratification disease phenotype, and severity of the disease course, defined by a wide panel of criteria obtained from the past medical history, was assessed. Results: The positivity of at least one anti-glycan antibody was detected in a significant higher proportion of CD and UC compared with healthy controls [p < 0.0001 and p < 0.0007, respectively]. Whereas ASCA and ANCA antibody status had the highest efficacy to be associated with CD in comparison with UC (area under receiver operating characteristic curve [AUROC] = 0.70 for each], the adjunction of anti-laminarin antibody substantially improved the differentiation between CD and UC [AUROC = 0.77]. Titres of ACCA [> 51 U/ml] and anti-laminarin [> 31 U/ml] were significantly linked with a higher association with steroid dependency (odds ratio [OR] =2.0 [1.0-4.0], p = 0.03 and OR = 2.4 [1.1-5.2], p = 0.02, respectively]. We further defined the respective performance of anti-glycan antibodies to discriminate between patients with severe or not severe CD and UC course and determined the associated optimal cut-off values: severe CD course was significantly more likely in case of AMCA > 77 U/ml [OR = 4.3; p = 0.002], ASCA > 63 U/ ml [OR = 3.5; p < 0.009] and at a lesser degree ACCA > 50 U/ml [OR = 2.8; p < 0.02] and severe UC course was significantly associated with AMCA > 52 U/ml [OR = 3.4; p = 0.04] and ACCA > 25 U/ ml [OR = 3.0; p < 0.04]. Conclusions: Anti-glycan antibodies are valuable serological markers, especially AMCA antibodies that may help clinicians to promptly classify patients into high risk for severe disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]