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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