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VIDEO: Monitoring Antibody Levels can Help Determine Response in IBD
ORLANDO — In this exclusive video perspective from the Advances in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Sunanda Kane, MD, FACG, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, talks about the case discussion moderated at the meeting.
“The first set of case discussions was about the use of therapeutic drug monitoring for IBD and when we were doing this,” she told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. “Was it proactive? Was it reactive?”
Ultimately, Kane said the panel came to the consensus that antibody level might be more important than drug level because it could help predict whether a patient will respond to a drug and help physicians make decisions on drug dosing.
The panel went into a few specific case studies, including what to do with a patient who has been on combination therapy for very aggressive disease, but has shown improvement and is well at one year.
“What do you tell that patient? Do you deescalate in terms of the thiopurine? Can you pull back on that biologic?” Kane said. “The consensus of the panel was that you need to reassess disease at that 1-year time frame and that likely that you are not going to be able to stop either one, perhaps you could de-escalate the dose of the thiopurine, but certainly, you wouldn’t necessarily want to stop it."
Disclosure: Kane reports that she is a consultant for AbbVie and Janssen.