Does evidence exist to include dietary therapy in the treatment of Crohn’s disease?

Abstract

Prescription drugs and surgery are two common medical therapies for Crohn’s disease (CD), an inflammatory bowel disease that affects the GI tract. Unfortunately, certain drugs can cause serious side effects, and surgeries must often be repeated. No diet has been established to alleviate the pain and suffering of CD patients. This is curious given the fact that a higher prevalence of food sensitivities exist in this population of patients, and enteral nutrition is not only the first-line of therapy in Japan, but a known research method used to place the majority of CD patients into remission. Although not all patients respond equally to diet, many simply remove symptom-provoking foods, such as dairy, wheat, corn and certain fruits and vegetables. We suggest assisting these patients in their self-assessment of irritating and symptom-provoking foods by educating them in the use of a food–symptom diary followed by a customized elimination diet trialed for 2–4 weeks to determine if there is any benefit to the individual patient.

Keywords::

• Crohn’s disease
• diet
• elimination
• gluten
• lactose

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This research was made possible by a grant from the Broad Medical Research Program of the Broad Foundation. Amy Brown is CEO of Natural Remedy Labs, LLC and a Cengage textbook author. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Notes

^†Significantly higher Crohn’s disease risk during the first year following an appendectomy, but reached baseline levels within 5 years.

^‡Species not provided with Genus.