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The purinethol is a common "entry" medication regarding crohn treatment. There are different type of illness management referred as top-bottom, bottom-up. There is a post
http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=54486
Some school prefers to progressively treat it: first step being salicylate(ASA) medication, but these, in CD, are really not showing as the most effective at keeping remission and treating the disease.
There are complication in crohn that do not occur in ulcerative colitis. To start with ASA treatments is more pertaining with a UC diagnostic than with CD. This is my opinion and I am no doctor, but the ASA does not have the capacity to prevent, let say, the formation of fistula which can be a manifestation of crohn disease but is not present in UC.
Sorry if this sounds complicate. The point is that, after ASA, well there is prednisone that stands as a entry line treatment but it is only a good idea to help inducing remission and it is really controversial if it is really that great of an idea to give that at the beginning of treatment. It needs to be taken for short term and use for its great ability to reduce the inflammation. Steroids are not to be taken long term, so do not qualify well to be used as a maintenance medication to prevent the onset of symptoms.
That leaves you to the next step, immunosuppressant, which are purinethol (6-MP), azathioprine (AZA), and less frequently, methotrexate (MTX). Purinethol is generally the first medication they will try to introduce to maintain remission. There are a lot of people who takes it daily and takes it as a long term medication for many years as long as it proves itself effective. It can maintain remission during years for certain. So it is not a wrong thing to do from your GI.
The difference you can encounter is that certain will prefer to hit hard with the biologics (which are somewhat like the "cadillac" medication) to prevent the disease from evolving at all. From my perspective, it is a good idea to want to prevent the evolution but the biologics, yes they can work incredibly well, but, it is not rare to build up antibodies to these drugs which makes them become less effective. Some won't build antibodies and can take these drugs and achieve remission for years while on them, while other will encounter a loss of efficiency of the molecule after a few months to a few years. Where I live they are mostly used when the disease is pretty agressive.
As far as diet goes, most GI I've seen as told me there was no specific diet when you are not flaring. Most have told me, get on a low residue diet when you flare. They will generally tell you to be cautious with dairy and such. My GI has that opinion that if you stress yourself with the "correctness" of your food all the time, its probable that it generates more stress than good... Well this is an opinion like any other but from my researches and personal experience, avoiding dairy, gluten, processed-food, limit red meat, is about the best you can do diet-wise regarding crohn. SCD and paleo are, in my opinion, worthy of a try even though they are kinda hard to switch to.
Sorry if this makes a lot of informations all at once, I hope this helps a bit!
