Aug 9, 2020
Researcher Jean-Frederic
Colombel has studied
Inflammatory Bowel Disease treatment (IBD) for about forty
years.
He explains for listeners
Jean-frederic Colombel is a
professor of medicine and gastroenterology with the Feinstein IBD
Clinical Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at
Mount Sinai. He came to Mount Sinai about 10 years ago and had
been researching in Lille, France. He tells listeners how treatment
of this autoimmune disease has progressed over 40 years and what
scientists are still trying to understand.
He explains that even though doctors are able to bring patients
into deep remission with current inflammatory bowel disease
treatment where they have no symptoms and show a perfect
colonoscopy, there is not a real cure. As soon as they stop taking
the medications, the disease makes headway. Since coming to Mount
Sinai, he's worked on better predication and prevention
measures.
He tells listeners that Crohn's
disease and ulcerative colitis overlap and differ. For example,
medications that work for one also often work for the other.
Differences include how much of the digestive tract and layers of
the bowel are being affected. Crohn's disease, for example, can
result in a fistula—basically a "communication" or opening and
track across the perennial area. They can result in painful
abscesses and difficult day-to-day symptoms.
He then addresses known causes and describes how much is unknown.
IBD is a young person's disease, often showing up around age 25,
and early diagnosis is key to preventing complications. He
describes studies to better understand the disease, such as a large
scale serum sample collection of the U.S. Army to look at
biomarkers, as well as treatment efforts beyond drugs such as fecal
transplants to microbiome alterations.
For more see his page at Mount
Sinai:
mountsinai.org/profiles/jean-frederic-colombel.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK