An international research study, published in The Lancet, has thrown into question the current method of treating Crohn's disease - opening the door to a safer and more effective treatment option for sufferers of the chronic disease.
“Our study clearly demonstrated that this alternative treatment method was more effective at inducing disease remission than the conventional method,” said Dr. Brian Feagan, Director of Robarts Clinical Trials at Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario. Dr. Feagan coordinated the research trial and is an author on the study. “Not only were patients more likely to get their disease under control, but they were also spared exposure to steroids – the extended use of which is linked with metabolic disease and even increased mortality. It's simply a safer, more effective treatment method.”
Called a "step-up" approach, the conventional treatment for Crohn's disease involves first administering steroids in order to control the patient's symptoms (abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea); the next step involves administering immune-suppressing drugs, which prepare the body to receive the third medication – an antibody that curbs the inflammatory response at the root of the disease.
The alternative strategy, called "top-down" therapy, employs early use of immune-suppressing drugs combined with an antibody in order to address the disease from the start. Symptom-treating steroids may never even be needed.