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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Evaluating Therapeutic Interventions in the SHIP-deficient Mouse Model of Crohn Disease-like Ileitis and Fibrosis
Published on: October 14, 2025
Thalidomide for treatment of intestinal involvement of juvenile-onset Behçet disease
Kozo Yasui1, Noriko Uchida, Yohei Akazawa
1Department of Pediatrics, Nagano Red Cross Hospital, Nagano, Japan. k-yasui@nagano-med.jrc.or.jp
Background:
Thalidomide has been identified and its anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties clarified. This report expands our report of 2 entero-Behçet disease children who developed significant steroid toxicity and improved dramatically with thalidomide.
Methods:
We studied the effects of thalidomide in 7 juvenile-onset patients with severe, recurrent intestinal involvement of Behçet disease. Thalidomide was given at an initial dose of 2 mg/kg per day, and the dose was increased to 3 mg/kg per day if necessary (3 of 7 patients) or decreased to 1-0.5 mg/kg per day according to the responses to the drug.
Results:
All 7 patients showed dramatic improvement in clinical symptoms with thalidomide therapy, and they successfully discontinued steroid therapy. Patients receiving thalidomide were monitored for prolonged neurotoxicity, and the treatment and a few side effects were well tolerated by all patients.
Conclusions:
Our results indicate that thalidomide can be an efficacious medication in appropriately selected patients with some inflammatory bowel diseases with many chances of success.
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