Infliximab helps with weight gain in Chrones Disease patients

Research carried out at the University of North Carolina in the US, people treated with infliximab who also have chrones disease experience weight gain which so far can not be explained.

It was reported that some crohn's disease patients put on as much as 75 pounds, which is far more than any weight gain that had been witnessed in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and treated with infliximab.

A clinical research fellow at the Universit, Cristal Brown said that chrones patients were often malnourished and that this could help if the fight against the disease. The difficult question to ask is that what if they were to push chrones disease sufferers into obesity and all the associated problems that come with that?

Chrones patients who used Infliximab gained almost five times as much weight as patients with arthritis (4.97 kg versus 1.1 kg) and some people with Crohn's gained as much as 20 to 30 kg. There was no difference in weight gain between patients with luminal versus fistulous disease or by steroid use, baseline body mass index, smoking status, or chrons disease activity. These findings were based on the records on 92 people with Chrons disease and 51 rheumatoid arthritis patients. All of whom were at least 18 years old and who had received three or more infusions of infliximab.

It is thought that many patients with the disease would probably benefit from a small weight gain as the disease often led to some degree of undernourishment, but there is a need for a larger study to determine the cause of this weight gain and the role of leptin in the weight gain.

Cancer Drugs used to treat Chrones Disease

New cancer drugs could help regulate body's immune system and thus help fight Chrones disease according to some researchers in the US. Known as histone deacetylases inhibitors, or HDACs, the new cancer drugs might work extremely well in blocking the over active immune systems in people who have autoimmune diseases including chrones disease.

Wayne Hancock of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says that this treatment for Crohn's disease would improve the immune systems ability to actually regulate itself and in the one study carried out on mice, the drug helped reverse and even prevent inflammatory bowel disease as well as prevented the rejection of heart transplants in other mice.

Up till now, the drug has mostly been used in studying cancer, but that could change and more tests could soon be done for diseases like Chrones disease.

Chrones Disease and Perianal Fistulas

So what is a Fistula?

Fistulas are pretty common in people who have Chrones Disease and the basic definition is that they are abnormal connections or passageways between organs or vessels that should not normally connect to each other.

What Are Perianal Fistulas?

A perianal fistula is a abnormal connection between the anus and rectum with another organ or vessel such as the skin or the vagina.

According to research about 12 percent of people with chrones disease have Perianal fistulas, this is a huge amount as there are said to be at least half a million people with Crohn's disease in the US alone. Anal fistulas can lead to a big drop in the quality of life for anyone who has them as they can cause anal incontinence and infections.

How are Fistulas treated?

Surgery
Surgery is currently the main form of treatment, which is invasive as well as having a fairly poor success rate.

Anti TNF-alpha and drugs like Remicade (Infliximab) are also now used. The success rate of this treatment varies from patient to patient.

Cx401 (Still in development)
Cx401 is an non-embryonic (autologous) stem cell product developed by Cellerix from human adipose tissue. This autologous source offers clear advantages over other alternatives such as bone-marrow, including easier access to the stem cells and higher yield (100 to 1,000 times). Using a minimal amount of fat drawn from the patient, it is possible to obtain stem cells that have an extraordinary capacity to facilitate the healing process of fistulas.

How will the CX401 treatment work?
The treatment consists of the extraction, expansion and re-administration of the patient's own cells into the area that has fistulas. The natural healing of the fistula tract is achieved through the anti-inflammatory properties of Cx401.

So far there have been excellent clinical results obtained to date with the product. In a study to evaluate feasibility and safety of Cx401, it was confirmed that it has the potential to treat fistulas in Chrones Disease patients and showed a 75% response rate only 8 weeks after the initial treatment.

Newish Drug Could Help Chrones Disease Patients

Naltrexone in the past has been used to treat people who abuse drugs and alcohol, but now it could also be helping people with Chrones Disease. That is according to some recent research.

the research was conducted by Doctors in the USA and involved a small number of chrones patients, their findings found that some peoples symptoms of Chrons Disease actually went into remission when they took the drug (Naltrexone).

So what is Naltrexone?
Naltrexone is an opioid or narcotic antagonist and what it does is it blocks narcotics. The good news is that the drug Naltrexone has approval from the FDA to ease drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and so because of this it could also be used to help people suffering with Chrones disease.

Dr. Smith who was working on the research commented: "We don't understand the mechanism of how it works in Crohn's 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"

The patients took 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, the ideas is conduct larger scale studies which can only be good news for people suffering with Chrones Disease.

Amazon.com for the USA
Crohn's & Colitis Diet Guide: Includes 150 Recipes

Amazon.co.uk for the UK
Crohn's & Colitis Diet Guide: Includes 150 Recipes

Treatments for Chrones Disease

One of the first thing that you may be wondering if you are diagnosed with chrones disease, is what kind of treatments are available ad what to expect. I am sure that your doctor will go through most of this with you, but here is what I found from a little research for both you and myself:


If you have Chrones disease you could be given medications like 5-aminosalicylate this will be to control the inflammatory process.

If the treatment of 5-aminosalicylate is not effective or if your case of crohn's is very severe, you may require corticosteroids and immunomodulators such as azathioprine or 6-mercaptopurine.

If you have any fistulas or abscesses you may be given antibiotics to fight against it. Infliximab which is an antibody to an immune chemical called TNF-alpha, which promotes inflammation. This treatment can work for people with fistulous disease.

If medical treatment and the drugs above have no effect, or do not work, you may need surgery where the segment of your bowel which has the Chrones disease will be removed. Unfortunately though, unlike ulcerative colitis the removal of a diseased portion of the intestine does not cure Chrones disease.

Up to this point in time, there has been no concrete evidence that a specific diet has been shown to either worsen or improve someones Crohn's disease. But as with everyone and probably more so with people suffering with Chrones disease, it is very important that you maintain a good intake of calories, vitamins, and protein is important. The foods that make your diarrhoea worse should be avoided and specific food problems may vary from person to person.

For people form the USA (Amazon.com)
Books on Chrones disease


For people form the UK (Amazon.co.uk)
Books on Chrones disease

Tysabri Approved for Chrones Disease Treatment

People with Chrones Disease have some excellent news in that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a drug called Tysabri (natalizumab) to treat people with chrones disease who have not yet responded to other forms of treatment.

Tysabri has potentially some pretty serious side effects and because of this people with chrones disease who are using the drug Tysabri will also be enrolled in a program that restricts distribution called Crohn's Disease-Tysabri Outreach Unified Commitment to Health (CD-TOUCH). Some of the possible side effects of Tysabri include anaphylactic reactions,possible liver injury, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (a viral infection that affects the brain. This viral infection could cause severe disability or even death.)

The CD-TOUCH program will allow physicians to check people with chrones disease that are using Tysabri after three months, if there is no sign of improvement Tysabri will no longer be perscribed.

Tysabri was approved way back in 2006 for the treatment of patients suffering from elapsing multiple sclerosis and now has to go ahead to be used on Chrones Disease sufferers. It is produced by Elan, a company based in Ireland as well as Biogen Idec in the US and will used on patients with chrones who have yet to respond to any other forms of treatment


What is Chrones Disease?
Chrones Disease affects the bowel. It is incurable and the symptoms include diarrhea, fever, rectal bleeding, malnutrition, narrowing of the intestines, cramping, and abdominal pain. More than 1 million people around the world have chrones disease.

The disease can also lead to abnormal connections in the gut which are called fistulas these connections grow from the intestines to the skin or internal organs.

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