Waste in the Long Road to an IBD Cure

Inflammatory bowel disease is an incredibly diverse disease that can force patients to go through multiple treatment options before they find one that works. Time spent on finding the right regimen is a large source of time and money wasted, according to Johan Burisch, M.D., Ph.D., a gastroenterologist at Hvidovre Hospital in Denmark.

“Usually, a treatment takes weeks to months before we are sure whether this drug works or not, and if it doesn't work, patients have to go through another cycle, and suddenly a year has passed and the patient has had symptoms the whole time,” Burisch said in an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive. “These are young patients in the middle of education, starting families and starting careers. They won't get [the time] back.”

A cure for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may someday be possible, but the definition of “cure” is nuanced, according to Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, M.D., M.P.H., MGH, associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“It's possible, but I want to say it in a very guarded way, because we recognize that the environment continues to affect your microbiome,” Ananthakrishnan also said in a video interview with Managed Healthcare Executive. “There are all those environmental factors that potentially contribute to someone developing IBD and those very much remain in play even after a particular treatment. So, it may not be possible that you just sort of treat things once, and then you are immune to the effects of the environment. Maybe you will need [treatment] redoing at various intervals, or manipulation of the environment.”

The two main types of IBD are ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Ananthakrishnan was the author of a study about the effects of diet and microbiome directed therapy in IBD patients, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology in February.

Burisch also published research in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology in February. His study, ‘The Cost of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Care: How to Make it Sustainable,’ found that IBD care estimates range anywhere from $9,000 to $12,000 per person annually in high-income countries like the United States.