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BACKGROUND: Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the primary inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), and its pathogenesis is related to genetic and environmental factors. Currently, the diagnosis of IBD results in a multidisciplinary approach with significant disadvantages, such as its invasive nature, time spent, and the fact that 10% of patients remain without diagnostic classification. However, new methodologies of analysis have emerged that allowed the expansion of knowledge about IBD, as the metabolomics, the study of metabolites. The presence and prevalence of such metabolites may prove to be useful as biomarkers in the diagnosis of IBD. OBJECTIVE: Analyze fecal samples for metabolic analysis in the diagnosis of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), providing differentiation between Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. METHODS: This is an observational study with 21 patients diagnosed with IBD (ulcerative colitis 11 and Crohn’s disease 10) and 15 healthy controls, all with the consent and clarification. The fecal extracts of all patients are submitted to a high-resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Hydrogen (1H-NMR) spectroscopy combined with multivariate and univariate pattern recognition techniques. Through the metabolomics of fecal extracts, gives us a characterization of employing a noninvasive approach. RESULTS: We identify some metabolites, such as lactate, succinate, alanine, and tyrosine, in the Crohn’s disease fecal samples, and leucine, alanine, and tyrosine in the ulcerative colitis fecal samples. All the amino acids presented positive covariance for disease correlation. CONCLUSION: The results showed different metabolic profiles between IBD patients and healthy volunteers based on 1H-NMR analysis of fecal extracts. Moreover, the approach discriminated patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The metabolomics analysis is promising as a novel diagnostic technique for further IBD recognition and surveillance. New studies are necessary to validate these findings.

OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the impact of drug use on the quality of life (QoL) of users, identifying the differences between men and women. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional, exploratory and quantitative study carried out in institutions that host drug addicts in the city of Maceio, Alagoas. In the evaluation, the abbreviated version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-bref) was used in 101 subjects who had a diagnosable relationship of dependence with alcohol and / or other drugs. For tabulation and analysis of the data was used Microsoft Office Excel, SPSS software version 15 for Windows and EpiInfo Windows Version 3.5.4. RESULTS: A sample of 101 chemical dependents consisted of 51 men (50,5%) and 50 women (49.5%), with a mean age of 33.84 years. It was found a lower satisfaction rate with the aspects that integrate the environment (41,89%) and psychological (43,77%) domains. Self-perception of QoL was the only parameter that showed a statistically significant difference between genders, which revealed the female gender with higher mean scores (36%) , compared to the male (23,0%). All other parameters showed no significant differences between the genders. CONCLUSIONS: Drug use had an impact on quality of life , evidenced by the low scores obtained by users in the psychological and environmental domains of WHOQOL-bref. In general, the difference between the genders was not statistically significant in the comparison of QoL among the chemical dependents, except for the QoL self-assessment.