New antibody in treatment of Crohns and UC

Interesting, but unfortunately, the study did not compare it with other treatments, just placebo. Looks like around a 50% response rate, which is OK. What I find amusing is that placebo has a 25% response rate.

There is one member here who has been taking it, Pkitty, who was unable to get into full remission and went to Cleveland Clinic for a j-pouch, only to be diagnosed with Crohn's. So, she's in a holding pattern right now. I guess the Crohn's diagnosis makes sense now, knowing that vedolizumab works better in UC than Crohn's.

It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against the other biologics. I like the fact that it targets the intestine only. Too bad it is by IV infusion only, or it would be perfect!

The (reported) world IBD incidence of 4 million may be about right, since the U.S. incidence is about 1.4 million. Reporting in less developed countries is not very good.

Jan

I would like to see the full study. The news report last night said that the drug was tried on individuals who did not respond to other treatments so perhaps that is why there wasn't a direct comparison with other treatments; I guess you could take that as the sample being those with drug resistant UC/Crohns.

But yes, I find it interesting that the placebo also resulted in improvement for a 1/4 of the participants. I wonder what was actually in that placebo.

Wow, the numbers are a lot lower than I thought they would be (even with possible under-reporting from other countries). It just seems that I know so many people who have UC or Crohns. But then again, Canada has one of the highest rates of IBD in the world, so at least here the numbers are proportionately higher.

Yeah, Europe and North America have the highest rates in the world.

It appears that hey have not published the vedolizumab trial results, but there are 7 clinical trials, most of which are complete.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/...izumab&Search=Search

Jan

Placebos routinely show surprisingly high response rates. Some of it may be a genuine effect of optimism on biological processes (e.g. psychoneuroimmunology), and most of the results being measured are subjective, and thus readily influenced by our expectations.

In the case of IBD, there is also the random incidence of spontaneous remission. This occurs even without placebo. But, yes, with virtually everything, there is a placebo effect, where believing something will work actually affects the outcome (and why they need double blinding, because the scientists can unknowingly affect outcome by their behavior with the people who are getting the actual treatment vs. placebo).

The mind is a powerful thing, and why you need to have a positive attitude going into surgery!

Jan