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In patients with Crohn's disease a multicenter prospective study found that anti-TNF therapy failed to achieve remission at 3 years in about two-thirds of cases, and that high drug concentrations early in treatment are linked to greater probability of sustained remission. This suggests that...

Recent meta-analysis of 32 published studies identified exposure to certain types of chemicals and pollutants as associated with increased risk of IBD. Plastics were not specifically called out. Interestingly, exposure to zinc was found to be associated with lowered risk of IBD. Quote: "The 32...

My Stelara seems to partially wear-off during the last two weeks of my eight week dose intervals. My primary Crohn's symptom was (and is) abdominal pain much more than diarrhea, and often in the last two weeks of an eight week cycle the pain episodes get more frequent and more intense - nothing...

Like you I kept the first few, but after that I started just throwing them away in the trash. After more than 6 years on Stelara, I would have otherwise been buried under them by now.

If you are not feeling lot better on the steroids by the end of the two weeks at 40 mg, the gastroenterologist should be thinking about another approach to to get you into remission.

As the steroids (apparently slowly) bring your flair under control. you need to be thinking about a different and more effective maintenance treatment. Pentasa is pretty much useless for Crohn's disease. It's much more suited to treating ulcerative colitis, not Crohn's. I recommend that you...

Yes, I have been self-administering shots of Stelara at home for over 6 years now. I was a little nervous at first, but it's really not that difficult. For Stelara only the first loading dose is administered in the clinic. All the follow-up doses have been shots at home.

Bring a book. If it's anything like the first infusion of Stelara I had, there can be a fair amount of sitting around as the infusion drips in. They will monitor you closely to make sure there are no unexpected adverse reactions, but I've never heard of anyone having anything very serious -...

What you posit sounds plausible, but as I said, it's early days and not much research on the topic has been done so far. However, it is unlikely that any research could be conducted in humans that could prove causality. The type of research that perhaps could be done would be to show that...

I haven't seen anything big linking microplastics to IBD, but it's early days yet. It seems like research in the medical effects of microplastics is just getting started. One thing that is clear though is that, if microplastics promote or contribute to IBD development, they are not the sole...

I don't know about freeze-dried or powder. I never use anything except fresh kiwis.

Try kiwi fruit. It's my current favorite cure of constipation, and it has recent research to back it up: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21147704/

Today the results of US government's price negotiations with drug companies for Medicare recipients was announced. There has been a 66% reduction the in the price Medicare pays for Stelara. This is very good news for Medicare recipients on Stelara since it has been one of the most...

I don't know about health coverage in other countries, but if you are located in the US it is unlikely that your insurance company will agree to pay for an expensive drug like Skyrizi without a definite diagnosis of Crohn's or another disease that Skrizi is approved to treat.

I can see why you are going in circles. You have some findings that add up to likely not Crohn's and another set of findings that say probably mild Crohn's, but you have no one finding that cinches the deal. One question is what color is the rectal bleeding? Bright red = coming from colon or...

26 is pretty high, so you are right that low levels of drug is probably not the problem. You could perhaps suggest adding an immunosuppressant such as azathioprine or methotrexate to give the Remicade a helping boost. Or you could consider switching to another biologic such as Humira or even a...

I don't have much personal experience with either drug, but in general corticosteroids will start to reduce inflammation pretty quickly - within a few days.

What is the trough concentration of Remicade in the blood, and are there anti-drug antibodies present?

I don't know whether they are planning a new trial or not. Disease prevention trials are always difficult because you don't know in advance who is going to get the disease or not. So to get enough cases of Crohn's the placebo arm of the the trial to ascribe a statistically significant disease...

Which works better depends on the location of your Crohn's ulcers and inflammation. Uceris and and Entocort are different formulations the same drug (budesonide - a corticosteroid). The key thing about budesonide is that it primarily acts topically rather then systemically, meaning that it is...