Nutritional Therapy Versus 6-Mercaptopurine as Maintenance Therapy in Patients with Crohn's Disease

    April 2012 in “ Digestive and Liver Disease
    Hiroyuki Hanai, Takayuki Iida, Ken Takeuchi, Hajime Arai, Osamu Arai, Jinrou Abe, Tatsuo Tanaka, Yasuhiko Maruyama, Kentaro Ikeya, Ken Sugimoto, Toshio Nakamura, Kouichi Nakamura, Fumitoshi Watanabe
    TLDR Elental is a good long-term treatment for Crohn's disease, similar to 6-mercaptopurine but with fewer side effects.
    The study compared the efficacy of an elemental diet (Elental) and 6-mercaptopurine as maintenance therapies for Crohn's disease over 24 months. Ninety-five patients with a Crohn's disease activity index ≤150 were divided into three groups: 6-mercaptopurine (n=30), Elental (n=32), and a control group (n=33), all receiving 5-aminosalicylic acid. The remission rates were 60% for 6-mercaptopurine, 46.9% for Elental, and 27.2% for the control group. Both 6-mercaptopurine and Elental were more effective than the control, with no significant difference between them. However, 6-mercaptopurine was associated with side effects, including liver injury and alopecia. The study concluded that Elental was as effective as 6-mercaptopurine for long-term maintenance therapy in Crohn's disease.
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