Personalised medicine is a term that has seen a major increase in interest and popularity recently, but I am here to tell you, the potential benefits for IBD patients could be a major game changer!
Cure Crohn’s Colitis have invested £60,000 into a project which has the potential to predict an IBD patients response to treatment.
Tariq Ahmad, head of The Exeter IBD and Pharmacogenetics Research group said “Our research focuses on the development of genetic tests to enable clinicians to select the most appropriate therapies for individual IBD patients, maximizing benefit and minimising harm from adverse drug reactions. Our goal is to use genetic technologies to advance prescribing from the current trial and error approach to allow the selection of the right drug, at the right dose, for the right patient, first time. We have employed the latest genome sequencing techniques to identify predictive genetic markers of drug response and side effects.”
We carried out a quick poll in the #IBDSuperHeroes group so that we could gauge how significant this would be for Crohn’s and Colitis suffers and these were the results:*
How many medications did you try before finding a treatment that worked for you?
From 51 respondents:
33% tried 6 medications before they found one that worked OR they had surgery (3 out of 17 had surgery)
23% tried 3 medications before they found one that worked OR they had surgery (for half of these, that treatment was surgery)
17% tried 1 medication before they found one that worked
15% tried 5 medications before they found a treatment that worked
17% of people had surgery because the medications they tried didn’t work. Those people had tried between 3 and 9 medications.
How many medications have you had an adverse reaction to which meant that you couldn’t continue to take it?
From 70 respondents:
30% have had to stop a treatment because they had a bad reaction to it
26% have never had a reaction to a treatment
14% have had to stop 3 treatments because they had a bad reaction to them
11% have had to stop 2 treatments because they had a bad reaction to them
So, just from a small sample of the online IBD community, it’s apparent that getting that medication right first time would make a huge difference. If the correct treatment was given straight away, this could massively reduce the number of people that ultimately need surgery. Because many medications take a while to work, a lot of time is wasted while we just "sit and wait" to see if it’s been affective. Meanwhile, the disease takes further hold of the patient’s body, which can lead to irreversible damage that surgery is needed to resolve.
Crohn’s and Colitis patients that have previously had a bad reaction to treatment can (understandably) become very anxious about trying new ones. Knowing in advance that these medications aren’t suitable could prevent the patient having to experience this, plus the additional anxiety and stress that this causes.
Roy Provan, Chair at Cure Crohn’s Colitis commented: "As a charity, we are committed to funding high quality patient-centric research, and Dr Ahmad's team is gaining a reputation as a world-leading centre for IBD research. I am excited about the potential benefits of this study not only for future research but also for the positive difference it will make to the lives of IBD sufferers."
We're all very excited about this at #IBDSuperHeroes HQ too!
#IBDSuperHeroes chose to support Cure Crohn’s Colitis because 100% of your donations go to patient-centric research, aiming to improve IBD patient’s quality of life and ultimately find a cure for Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. If you’d like to make a donation, allowing future investment into vital studies like this one, visit the donate page.
* Percentages have been rounded up.
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