Objective To investigate the expression of HSF2 in colonic mucosa of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC),Crohn's disease (CD),intestinal tuberculosis (ITB),intestinal lymphoma (IL),infectious enteritis,Behcet's disease and normal control.Methods Intestinal tissue samples were retrieved from 2003-2011 archived specimen at the Department of Pathology,and assigned to UC group (n =38),CD group (n =29),ITB group (n =31),IL group (n =32),infectious enteritis group (n =32) and Behcet's disease group (n =28).10 cases were recruited as normal control group.The expression of HSF2 in colonic mucosa were detected by immunohistochemistry.Positive cells were counted by Image Analysis.Results The expression rate of HSF2 in intestinal mucosa of UC patients (64.64 ± 15.17) was significantly higher than that of CD (32.44 ± 5.94),ITB (36.93 ± 6.32),IL (36.16 ± 6.55),infectious enteritis (37.86 ±7.76),Behcet's disease (34.90 ±5.92) and normal control (35.54 ±6.76) (P ＜0.05),while there was no significant difference among the latter six groups (P ＞ 0.05).Conclusion HSF2 is closely related with UC,and may play an important role in the pathogenesis,diagnosis and differential diagnosis of UC.