Thalidomide For Crohn's

I came across an interesting study that showed that thalidomide may help against Crohn’s. Thalidomide was a controversial drug that woman took in the 1950’s for morning sickness. One drawback however was that it caused many birth defects.

This study in the December 1999 issue of Gastroenterology showed that when 14 patients were treated with thalidomide they all responded in some way to the drug. 67% had clinical remission with more than 50% in just 4 weeks. The study was done on patients who had not responded to any other therapies. It would be interesting to see how patients with mild-moderate would respond to thalidomide.When a 10 patient trial was done by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center 70% of the patients responded to the drug however only 20% had clinical remission.

In probably the only study to date published in the February issue of Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition 5 patients were picked out of 96 (thalidomide was used as a last resort before surgery) 80% of patients were in remission even 19-24 months after treatment.I am really curious to see much larger scale trials done on thalidomide and see if there are any long term side-effects for both females and males.