HMGB1 and inflammatory response: In previous studies, we detected substantial amounts of HMGB1 in the fecal stream of patients with CD and UC, indicating that the protein is abundantly secreted by mucosal cells during gut inflammation to such an extent that fecal HMGB1 has been proposed as a robust noninvasive biomarker of clinical and subclinical intestinal inflammation [20,21,22,23].