Chrons Disease With Fistulas Breakthrough

There is real hope for people who have fistulas because of their Chrons Disease as it was recently announced in France at the European Chrons and Colitis Organization (ECCO) annual meeting that HUMIRA (Adalimumab) is successful for the treatment of fistulas in people who have Crohn's disease.

So what is Chrons disease?

Chrons Disease is basically a gastrointestinal disorder where there is chronic inflammation of the walls of some part of the digestive tract. People affected with the disease suffer periods of flare-ups and then periods where they are in remission, this can continue through the whole life of the person.

Is Chrons Disease the same as ulcerative colitis?
The short answer is No, Chrons is considered medically as an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and it is similar to ulcerative colitis.

Fistulas and Chrons
In a recent study, it was suggested that almost half (43%) of Chrons disease patients will develop fistulas, which can be both painful and embarrassing.

What Are Fistulas?
Fistulas are basically tunnels that connect the chrons affected organs to surrounding tissues. These can include the bladder, vagina, or even the skin. Fistulas are very difficult to treat and can cause fecal discharge from abnormal locations, leading to not only embarrassment but also incontinence, infections, and other complications that will usually mean that the patient has to undergo surgery.

So how can HUMIRA (Adalimumab) help?
HUMIRA, or Adalimumab works by binding Tumor Necrosis Factor α (TNF-α), which is an important part of the immune response pathway

Because of this, Adalimumab is related to infliximab and other similar TNF-α blockers. The good news is that it has already been given the green light in a few countries for treatment of many diseases that are autoimmune related including Chrons Disease, psoriasis and some types of arthritis.

The study that took place showed some very posetive results and did point to the fact that the healing of fistulas was a lot better in people who had been given HUMIRA:

• 60% of chrons patients showed fistula healing after 1 year of treatment
• 76% of patients who showed the improvement and healing after 1 year continued the healing up to 2 years
• 71% of patients showed a significant 50% reduction in the number of draining fistulas after 2 years of treatmen with HUMIRA.
  

During thsese 2 years that people with chrons with fistulas had a higher quality of life because the disease was in remission.

All sounds like excellent news, I would love to hear from anyone who has any first hand exprience, if you have please leave a comment.

Chrons Disease and Aggressive Therapy

A recent study has shown that if you treat chrons disease more aggressively, it resulted in a better outcome for patients. This study was performed by an international team of researchers.

The researcher's found that shortly after a person had been diagnosed with chrons disease, using more than 1 immunosuppressive drug was more effective in inducing remission than starting patients on corticosteroids.

One of the researcher's, Dr. Brian Feagan said that more studies needed to be conducted, but if you treat chrons patients earlier with more aggressive therapy it may be more effective than the traditional method. Doctors are always looking for ways to treat people who suffer from chrons disease without the use of steroids, so this could mean en exciting development.
Nobody really knows the true cause of chrons disease but basically what happens is there is an inflammation of the gut that often affects the small intestine, the swelling leads to pain and diarrhea. The current theory is that someone with crohn's disease has lost tolerance to normal bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. "The immune system is in a controlled inflammatory state. In Crohns disease, it is thought that the immune system is becoming unhappy with normal flora. White blood cells migrate into the tissue and release nasty things and cause damage." said Feagan, director of Robarts Clinical Trials at Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.

The current usual treatment for someone with crohns begins with corticosteroids. If the patient shows really bad side effects to the steroid treatment or if some sort of resistance to the drug begins to show the treatment usually moves on to a range of immunosuppressive drugs like Rheumatrex (methotrexate). If this treatment does not help, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-blockers are often then used.

Remicade (infliximab) with Imuran (azathioprine)
In the research 133 people with chrons disease in Belgium, Germany and Holland had either combined immunosuppression or the traditional method. 67 had the joint immunosuppression with three infusions of Remicade (infliximab) with Imuran (azathioprine) at the start and then again a few weeks later and then again 4 weeks after that. The other 66 patients were given steroids ad then given Imuran and Remicade.

Study Results
Some initial findings show that after 6 months sixty percent of the patients on the combined immunosuppression had their chrons disease in remission with no need for steroids or any form of surgery. From the second group only 35.9% were in remission.

Later on, after one year the figures were:
61.5% of the combined immunosuppression group were in remission compared to ony 42.2 % of patients following the more traditional method of chrons disease treatments.

More research is to follow, but if they come to the same conclusion, the conventional treatment for Chrons could change.

Down sides to Remicade (infliximab)
Remicade is administered intravenously so the person has to go to a medical center to receive treatment.

About Chrons Disease

I found this excellent video about chrons disease which explains all the main details including:

Chrons Disease Definition
Chrons Disease Diagnosis
Chrons Disease Treatment

So if you get tired my writing, take a look at the video, it may answer a few of your questions:

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and Chrons Disease

I had not realised until recently that the Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready suffers from Chrons Disease. I only found out because I found this great video on YouTube of a guy who tells of his experience of the disease with a Perl Jam backing track, which he uses because of the fact Mike McCready has chrons Disease.

Anyway here is the video:




Apparently the Perl Jam guitarist announced that he had chrons in 2003 and the main reason he decided to go public was because of the strength of a teenager who had suffered through 6 surgeries and still had a long way to go to get to grips with chrons.

During his speech which he made on stage, Mike spoke of a particularly embarrassing incident to demonstrate how Chrons can come at any time. He said that whilst playing onstage at a gig, he would always make sure he was aware of where the bathrooms were "When Crohn's hits, I have to run, or it won't be pretty. It happened when we opened up for the Rolling Stones in 1997 in Oakland. It was our first show with them, Five minutes before we went on, I went up to Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder and I said, 'Look man, can we play 'Sometimes'? — which is a slower song that I'm not really on. I was in pain. I went running offstage looking for a bathroom, and there wasn't one. Then, all of a sudden, there was one. It was a honey bucket. I heard my band play that song from inside a portable toilet!"

I am sure may people who have chrons disease can relate to this story!

Chrons Disease Drug Tysabri has been approved

There is some great news for people who suffer from Chrons Disease in the US as the Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a drug called Tysabri (natalizumab).

Tysabri which is produced by Ireland based company Elan and Biogen Idec in the USA is to be used on chrons patients who have not responded to other forms of treatment, it was given the green light in 2006 to treat people who have elapsing multiple sclerosis and will now be given the all clear to be used with people suffering from Chrons Disese.

Possible side effects of the drug include the risk of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy which is a viral infection that affects the brain. This viral infection could cause severe disability or even death. Another possible side effect are anaphylactic reactions and possible liver injury.

Because of these possible serious side effects people with chrons disease who are prescribed the drug Tysabri will also be added to a restricted distribution program called Crohn's Disease-Tysabri Outreach Unified Commitment to Health (CD-TOUCH).

This program will allow doctors to check the chrons disease patients that are using Tysabri after three months and will be asked to stop using the drug if there if there are no signs of improvement in that time.

Drug Details
Drug Name: TYSABRI (Brand Name Drug)
FDA Application No. (BLA) 125104
Active Ingredient: NATALIZUMAB
Company: BIOGEN IDEC
Original Approval or Tentative Approval Date: November 23, 2004
There are no Therapeutic Equivalents

Chrons Disease is an incurable disease that affects the bowel. Symptoms often include diarrhea, fever, rectal bleeding, malnutrition, narrowing of the intestines, cramping, and abdominal pain. Chrons disease affects more than one million people around the world and can also lead to abnormal connections that are called fistulas from the intestines to the skin or internal organs.

Chrons Disease basics

Some Basic Chrons Disease facts: What it is and some of the main Chrons Disease Symptoms

Often when you are trying to research a medical condition like Crohn's Disease, you get bombarded with long words and medical terminology. In this article I will try and explain what chrons disease is in really basic terms. Hope it helps

So What is Chrons Disease?
Basicall Chrons disease is a medical condition that causes inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract which is sometimes known as the gut.

So what is the gut then?
When medical people talk of the gut, they mean your oesophagus (where your food first goes down after swallowing it!), your stomach, and your small and large intestines.

People cant be affected by Chrons disease in any part of the gut, but it seems to occur more often in the lower part of your small intestine, this part of your intestine is known as the ileum.

How do I know if I have Chrons Disease and what are the basic Chrons Disease symptoms?
The most common symptoms of chrons disease include, pain, which is often in your lower abdomen or stomach, ulcers and diarrhoea.

What can be done to help with the Chrons Disease Symptoms?
If you are diagnosed with Crohn's disease, you may be given medication that you will take daily that can help relieve your symptoms. Sometimes the medication will not work and you may have to have surgery to remove part of your gut, that has been affected with chrons disease.

So how common is Chrons Disease?
Chrons Disease is probably more common than you may have thought, about 1 person in 1,500 people have Chrons disease.

Chrons Disease can start at any age, but most often first shows up between the ages of 15 and 40. The disease also seems to affect slightly more women than men.

What is the Prognosis of Chrons Disease?
If you have Chrons disease, what is your outlook? This can be difficult to answer as it will depend largely what part of your gut has the disease and how bad a case of chrons disease you have. But if we work on an average case of Chrons, most people will experience some symptoms from time to time - this is called a flare up.

Most people who have chrons disease (about 80 %) will eventually have surgery at some time, probably to remove the diseased part of your gut.

Only in very rare cases where there is a complication, will Chrons Disease be life-threatening.

Chrons Disease Prognosis

So you have been diagnosed with chrons disease, after the initial shock, many people want to know what the outlook is, or the prognosis of chrons disease?

Again as with many questions involving Chrons Disease, there is no straight answer and the outlook tends to be quite variable. It all depends on which part or parts of your gut have been affected with chrons, how frequent and how severe your flare-ups are.

The Stats on a Chrons Disease Prognosis
Around Eight out of every Ten people who have Chrons disease will eventually require some sort of surgery at some stage in their life. About 50% of people with Chrons disease surgery is required within the first 10 years from the emergence of the disease.

Why do most people with chrons disease need surgery?
Is seems that the most common reason is to relieve an abnormal contraction that has formed in your gut.

Some people with chrons disease require more than one operation in their lifetime and if your chrons disease developed as a young adult, the average is to have between 2 and 4 operations in your lifetime. The good news in all this glum is that you CAN expect to have a good quality of life for most of the time, and it is important not to forget that!

Stats on Chrons Disease Flare-ups
Around 15% of people who have crohns disease have frequent and / or severe flare-ups. Again this is not a fixed number as a few people with Chrons disease have just one or two flare-ups in their whole life and spend most of their lives with no symptoms of the disease. The most likely prognosis is that you fall somewhere in between and have flare-ups from now and again and can have long periods of time without any symptoms of Chrons Disease.

It is important to keep in mind that a severe flare-up is and can be life threatening and there are some people who die as a result of a serious complication like a perforated gut, so you should always seek professional medical advice if you suspect that you are having a Chrons disease flare up .