Crohn's Disease

A young woman, newly diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, sits in your office.

The FDA has approved subcutaneous administration of Takeda Pharmaceuticals’ Entyvio for maintenance therapy in adult patients with moderate-to-severe Crohn’s disease following induction therapy via IV administration of the biologic.

If you see more than a few patients with inflammatory bowel disease, you likely already have been asked by a third-party payer to switch a patient’s adalimumab prescription from the reference product to a biosimilar.

The age of biosimilars has come for gastroenterology. This includes interchangeable products, three of which are now on the market. How this will impact patient care in the near and distant future is the subject of much speculation.

Only half of rheumatologists are “extremely comfortable” prescribing the Humira biosimilar Amjevita, while just 16% can say the same for all other adalimumab biosimilars combined, according to a market analysis from Spherix Global Insights.

Induction and maintenance treatment with infliximab was more efficacious than vedolizumab in patients with Crohn’s disease, while efficacy was similar between the two therapies in patients with ulcerative colitis, according to data.

Female sex, smoking, Crohn’s disease and a history of surgery to treat inflammatory bowel disease were associated with an increased risk for developing extraintestinal manifestations of disease, according to research in Gastroenterology.

Once-daily Rinvoq 45 mg provided “rapid relief” of stool frequency and abdominal pain score within the first week of induction therapy in patients with moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease, according to a data analysis.

Early treatment with infliximab plus an immunomodulator resulted in more frequent steroid-free and surgery-free remission at 1 year compared with conventional therapy among patients with newly diagnosed Crohn’s disease, researchers reported.