Inflammatory Bowel Disease Surges Globally, Posing Treatment Challenges
In the last 30 years, the occurrence of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) has increased by 50%, and today affects around five million people worldwide. Related to Crohn’s Disease, the symptoms of IBD are trivialized and this also makes treatment difficult.
Doctor Alexandre de Sousa Carlos, from the Department of Gastroenterology at the Hospital das Clínicas of the Faculty of Medicine of USP, explains further the causes of this inflammatory disease and comments on possible treatments already used by global medicine.
What is IBD?
As Carlos explains, Inflammatory Bowel Disease is a complex disease, which can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract, that is, the path from the mouth to the anus. IBD is characterized by a cascade of inflammation in the tract, which initially causes diarrhea and abdominal pain and can progress to more serious symptoms. “The characteristic of this disease is the body’s exaggerated reaction”, says the specialist, “it is an immense inflammatory cascade with several stages. This is the great difficulty in treatment: knowing what is the main cascade that is affecting that patient.”
What causes?
One of the biggest difficulties related to the treatment of IBD is identifying the causes. Because the inflammation cascade is very diverse, knowing exactly what triggers it has become a challenge for researchers. However, explains Carlos, some general causes have already been identified:
“There are already several studies trying to identify some food triggers, the issue of pollution, the issue of our Western lifestyle: stress, smoking, the excess of some medications such as anti-inflammatory drugs. inflammation and excess ultra-processed foods. All of this causes a change in the intestinal microbiota.”
There are already treatments
Research into a cure for IBD covers several fronts, says the doctor. One of them is gene therapy, which seeks to identify the predisposition genes for these intestinal diseases. Another is fecal transplantation, to rebalance patients’ intestinal flora. “In a healthy person, the more diverse the intestinal flora, the better. And we really see this in patients, that diversity is reduced or there are fewer bacteria than usual.”
These treatments are cutting-edge, but expensive and difficult for the population to access. Understanding environmental and genetic factors, as well as developing an effective cure for the majority of cases, are among the great paradigms of current gastroenterology.