Search results

The exact cut-off for Stelara has not been established, but 4.5 is generally regarded as a solid number. And the further good news is you don't have antibodies against the drug. So with sufficient drug on board (or at least it was last December) and no antibodies, the drug should be...

Corn starch doesn't cause any issues for me, but neither do corn and popcorn. You will probably just have to try it and see. Which foods cause issues varies widely from one Crohn's patient to the next.

Interesting. But why do you need anti-rejection medication if you are receiving your own previously harvested stem cells? Since they arose from you they should be entirely immunologically compatible.

Article https://www.genomeweb.com/microarrays-multiplexing/inflammatory-bowel-disease-genetics-understanding-expands-east-asian?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GWDN%20Mon%20PM%202023-05-08&utm_term=GW%20Daily%20News%20Bulletin#.ZFlZ33bMKUk The paper...

Welcome to the Crohn's club. Do not waste any energy regretting not making it to age 30 without Crohn's. Had you done so you would have by no means been "home free." It's true that there is a spike in Crohn's incidence in the 20s and teen years, but there is a second spike in late middle...

We don't. That's the big problem with pretty much all microbiome studies that show an association between some organism and a given disease - can't distinguish cause from effect. No one has ever proven cause by fulfilling Koch's Postulates for IBD, and it would probably be unethical to try.

Interesting article on progress in using phages to kill bacteria instead of antibiotics (not specifically about IBD)...

Yes, those numbers are definitely elevated. Not super-high but high enough to justify your concern.

No, not FDA-approved. I believe the FDA has approved only the standard 8-week dosing for Stelara, although many docs use it "off label" at 6 or 4 weeks.

For Herpes zoster there are also vaccines to reduce the risk of reactivation: Zostavax and the newer and more-effective Shingrix. I've had them both over the years.

It often is, but monotherapy with Remicade or Humira is not unheard of. "@Scipio - Don't the two biologics work in the same way?" In theory, yes. They target the same protein, but that doesn't mean they behave identically in all respects. It's common right here on this forum to find...

Yeah, they found that, but they also found that Remicade + MTX was not better than Remicade alone. Which is at least mildly surprising to me. I would have expected those two biologics to behave the same in that respect.

Because I'm in stable remission so there really isn't a need for such close monitoring. If I started flaring and the doc couldn't see anything by routine colonoscopy, I suspect he might consider another capsule camera endoscopy. But fortunately that hasn't been necessary. Capsule camera...

No, I've stuck to western medicine.

I have never used it for monitoring. It was used just once for diagnosis. I'm in remission, so for monitoring it's been blood work every 4 to 6 months and a regular colonoscopy every two years.

The Monitr test consists of measuring a panel of proteins that variously have to do with the immune system, inflammation, and tissue regeneration that are combined through complex mathematics to produce a single numerical score that can in many patients mirror what is going on in the gut as...

I assume your coloscopy was negative for ulcers, right? Any anemia? If not, with no abdominal symptoms, clean scopes, and no anemia, it's difficult to point to Crohn's very much, or even to the GI tract in general. It could be a lot of different inflammatory/ autoimmune conditions. It could...

12.7 is plenty high for Stelara, so it's unlikely to be antibodies to Stelara or some other form of fast metabolism or clearance from his system. It also raises the question whether going to a 4-week dosing schedule would help at all. If 12.7 isn't doing it. I question whether boosting it...

Rinvoq is not FDA approved for treatment of Crohn's disease. JAK inhibitors haven proven to work pretty well for UC but less so for Crohn's. Consequently, no JAK inhibitors have yet achieved approval in the US for Croihn's.

Highly elevated calprotectin is more likely to be some highly inflammatory condition such as IBD. Mildly elevated could also be IBD, but it also opens the door to it possibly being something else such as celiac or some nonspecific irritation such as aspirin.