Prof. Thomas Borody | AMAT Success in Treatment Naive Patients

Presented at the American College of Gastroenterology meeting in October, this small study describing the treatment of patients with moderate to severe Crohn’s disease teaches us that there is a case to be made for using Anti-MAP therapy as a first-line treatment because it seems to give superior results.

The small study will need a proper “head-to-head” confirmatory study, but the results here are so much better when compared historically with our patients previously exposed to steroids, 5ASA compounds, and immune-suppressants, that we need to stop and ponder why this is so. We know that most Crohn’s disease therapies have anti-microbial activities, and so it seems that pre-treatment with any, even partial, Anti-MAP drugs dampens the response when the patient is finally started on the combination antibiotics.

Finding previously untreated Crohn’s patients is the major problem since most patients referred for Anti-MAP therapy are secondary or tertiary referrals, pre-treated elsewhere. A group of Centers will be enrolled to try and do such a study.