Hey Class! I wanted to share this article I found because I think it puts the disease in perspective of how pervasive it can be and its application to children. Crohn's Disease is not usually diagnosed at young ages but rates are continually increasing. This paper describes three cases individually who were medically therapy - resistant and had extremely poor qualities of life. I did not want to post the summaries of the three cases because it is definitely something worth reading (only 4 pages). The patient's initial non-responsiveness to some very strong and intensive steroid approaches clearly represents the intensity that this disease can have. The paper describes how side effects of steroidal use (potential treatment approach) caused mental retardation, moon face, growth retardation, malnutrition, fatty liver, and many more. The patients ultimately turned to surgical approaches and as a result increased their qualities of life as best as possible. Surgery is not always an attractive option, but in these cases it was the most successful because it allowed them to refrain from additional steroidal use.
One of the interesting points made is that "none of the cases had an immunodeficiency, which is an important differential diagnosis of IBD in this age group. Thus, may be caused by different underlying inflammatory mechanisms in early onset CD compared with typical adult cases." This statement alone represents that developments to the understanding of the disease are being made, which possibly opens up new research avenues.
Note: this article is very recent; released February 2008!
Here is the link to the article:
http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=28838658&site=ehost-live
Click on article linker (on the bottom right) and when the window opens up, on the right there is a link that says pdf full text :)
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