Chrons Disease sufferers relief as new drug could help

A drug called Naltrexone that has been used to treat people who abuse drugs and alcohol could also be helping people with Chrons Disease, research has shown.

In a small study, conducted by Doctors in the USA found that some peoples symptoms of Chrons Disease (crohn,s disease) went into remission when they took the drug (Naltrexone).

Naltrexone is an opioid or narcotic antagonist and what it does is it blocks narcotics. The drug has approval from the FDA to ease drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, but could also be used to help people with Chrons disease.

Dr. Smith who was working on the study said "We don't understand the mechanism of how it works in Chrons disease, but there are opioid proteins on inflammatory cells, so by using Naltrexone it does reverse the inflammation and it also causes healing of the ulcers in the intestine"

As mentioned before the study was only a small one, with the patients taking one low-dose pill at bedtime and showed minimal side effects. There was about About 89 percent of patients showed some sort of improvement with Naltrexone and 67 percent had total remission of their symptoms. With these positive findings, there are now larger studies taking place, good news for people suffering with Chrons Disease.



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