Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2021 Jun 17;11:12777. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-92262-4

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2021

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Semiquantitative grading of intestinal barrier dysfunction in the terminal ileum under CLE imaging. (A) Healthy terminal ileum (Watson Grade I): Healthy terminal ileum and intact epithelial barrier is characterized by finger-shaped villi with enterocytes forming the epithelial barrier. The intestinal lumen is dark when the intestinal barrier is intact (white asterisk). (B) Functional barrier (Watson Grade II) defect is characterized by shedding of single enterocytes generating a gap or loss of epithelial integrity with fluorescein leakage (red arrows) into the intestinal lumen which then turns bright (red asterisk). (C) Structural barrier defect (Watson Grade III) is characterized by shedding of multiple epithelial cells (red arrows) and fluorescein leakage into the lumen which as a consequence of fluorescein efflux turns bright (red asterisk). Dashed white line: apical border of the enterocytes forming the epithelial barrier.