Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 14, 2019; 25(30): 4235-4245
Published online Aug 14, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i30.4235
Natural history of children with mild Crohn’s disease
Yamini Sharma, Athos Bousvaros, Enju Liu, Julia Bender Stern
Yamini Sharma, Athos Bousvaros, Enju Liu, Julia Bender Stern, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Author contributions: All authors helped to perform the research; Sharma Y contribution to manuscript writing, drafting conception, performing data analysis, interpreting data; Bousvaros A contribution to manuscript writing, drafting conception and design, performing data analysis, interpreting data; Liu E contribution to statistical analysis of data; Bender Stern J contribution to providing data set.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the IRB of Boston Children’s Hospital.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because this was a retrospective medical chart review.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflicts-of-interest related to this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Athos Bousvaros MD, MPH, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Boston Children’s Hospital, 300 Longwood avenue, Boston, MA 02115 United States. Athos.bousvaros@childrens.harvard.edu
Telephone: +1-617-3556058
Received: January 22, 2019
Peer-review started: January 22, 2019
First decision: February 13, 2019
Revised: July 3, 2019
Accepted: July 5, 2019
Article in press: July 5, 2019
Published online: August 14, 2019
Processing time: 204 Days and 15.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: We demonstrate that a higher percentage of patients with mild Crohn’s have colonic disease compared to matched controls with moderate to severe disease. We show that patients with mild disease can be maintained for several years on milder treatments and the majority can avoid escalation to immunosuppressive therapies.