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CASE REPORT
Twenty years of biological therapy in an patient with IBD
  1. Wing Yan Mak,
  2. Jonathan P Segal,
  3. Ailsa Hart
  1. IBD Unit, St. Mark’s Hospital, Harrow, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Wing Yan Mak, mwy612{at}ha.org.hk, joycemwy{at}gmail.com

Summary

This interesting case is the first to our knowledge to report outcomes of a patient with Crohn’s disease (CD) treated with the biological drug, infliximab, for around 20 years. The case highlights the positive effect of long-term use of infliximab in achieving and maintaining remission in a patient with CD.

In this case, loss of response to infliximab was not dependent on length of exposure to the drug. It also appeared that infliximab was still efficacious after drug holidays, which can be especially important around times of pregnancy. Of interest, ‘loss of response’ to infliximab occurred at one particular time point. The drug was then reintroduced at a later date, which gave the patient clinical benefit. This case suggests that in some situations infliximab can be reintroduced in patients with previous ‘loss of response’.

Importantly, in this case, Infliximab had no major adverse effects during the 20 years follow-up.

  • inflammatory bowel disease
  • crohn’s disease
  • gastrointestinal system

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Footnotes

  • Contributors WYM is responsible for interviewing the patient, literature search and writing up the case. JS is responsible for interviewing the patient and writing up the case. He also helped with the planning of the manuscript, including conception and design. AH helped with the refinement of the manuscript.

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Patient consent Obtained.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.