VIDEO: The future of ulcerative colitis care

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

I’d like to see two main things. One is really integrating drug therapies that aim at blocking the inflammatory pathway with intervention, that are aimed at restoring a healthy gut microbiome, recognizing the role of gut dysbiosis in inflammatory bowel disease. Really intervention aimed at improving diet and lifestyle and other factors that will make our microbiome healthier and maybe more responsive to current therapy, or really having that kind of combination therapy that is beyond combining drugs, but also combining drugs, lifestyle, diet, etc. to really heal the gut and prevent flares.

And then the other thing I’d like to see is really a more comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach in us taking care of patients with ulcerative colitis. Again, recognizing that this is a disease that goes beyond the GI tract and that can really affect the patient’s life at so many levels physically and emotionally. Anywhere from having fatigue, poor sleep to cardiovascular diseases and neurological diseases due to this chronic inflammatory state, anxiety and depression.

It’s important, I think, for us moving forward and really wanting to provide the right quality of life for patients and preventing disability, not just in terms of their GI illness, but the overall health, to really approach the patient with a multidisciplinary team and allow the patient to have access to different specialists, mental health specialists, nutritionists to really have a comprehensive therapeutic plan for their ulcerative colitis.