Patients do not always respond equally to a specific treatment, but when research can predict the efficacy or ineffectiveness of a treatment on a case-by-case basis, this implies a real improvement in the therapeutic care.
As far as Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) are concerned for example, 40% of patients, ie. 2 million people worldwide, do not respond to anti-TNF, an immunosuppressive treatment to prevent relapses of the disease.
A recent study conducted by researchers of the Kennedy Institute (University of Oxford) and published in “Nature Medicine” may identify IBD patients non- responding to anti -TNF treatment. Indeed, the researchers observed a lesser response by subjects with a high concentration of a cytokine, oncostatin M (OSM). Following this discovery, researchers are searching different ways to block this cytokine, allowing non-responding patients to become receptive to anti -TNF. 1
“Such an approach paves the way to a personalized treatment of the disease. It may allow to avoid exposure of non-responding patients to this treatment, which has non negligible side effects, and also interestingly to optimize healthcare costs for this expensive treatment.
Concerning the anti -TNF treatment as such, let us remember the importance for the patients of a good intestinal flora in order to better face these treatments.”
Pr De Simone, About
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