What to Know About Infusion Therapy for IBD

The human gastrointestinal tract can be a hostile place for visitors. It’s filled with digestive acids and microorganisms that rapidly break down swallowed bits of food, and it can be just as rough on non-food molecules. That includes some of the latest drugs for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). “Some medications that target the immune system don’t work if they’re swallowed because your gut would digest them like a piece of steak,” says Dr. Gilaad Kaplan, a gastroenterologist, IBD researcher, and professor of medicine at the University of Calgary in Canada. “You have to deliver these medications to the immune system in a way that bypasses the GI tract.” One method of bypassing the gut is known as an infusion, which is essentially a drawn-out intravenous injection. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Infusion therapies for IBD have long been used in patients who need rapid, high-doses of a drug, or who are too unwell to swallow pills. For example, Kaplan says people with IBD who are very sick and hospitalized are sometimes administered systemic corticosteroids via intravenous infusion. However, infusions have become a more common method of delivering IBD drugs thanks to the emergence of biologics. Biologics are medicines made from living cells that are designed to locate and alter the activity of immune system proteins that promote inflammation, and many of them have to be administered via infusion. “Tr...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news