Systematic review on drug and diet-induced endoscopic remission in Crohn's disease

Neither the rate of endoscopic remission (ER) in Crohn's disease (CD) after therapy nor its role in patients' prognosis is well defined.

To systematically review the current evidence on the proportion of ER of different therapies in patients with Crohn's disease and its relation with clinical outcomes.

Databases (MEDLINE and Cochrane) and manual search of manuscripts found 482 titles. Data was extracted from 24 manuscripts.

Ten different methods were used to assess endoscopic outcomes. Corticosteroids induced a pooled proportion of patients with no ulcerations at endoscopic follow-up of 17% (95% confidence interval: 12-22%) lower than that found with infliximab [44% (34-53%)], diet [43% (33-52%)] or azathioprine [54% (38-69%)] (P<0.0001). Enteric diets and infliximab were associated with 61% (52-70%) and 70% (62-78%) reduction in endoscopic scores, respectively, significantly higher than corticosteroids [45% (39-52%)] (P=0.01) and placebo [12% (1-22%)] (P<0.0001). A linear relation between ER and clinical remission was observed with infliximab (r=0.931). Only one study tried to assess the direct correlation between ER and patients' prognosis.

Available treatments induce significant endoscopic improvement. However, pooled results should be cautiously interpreted because of the diversity of measurements. A better definition of endoscopic outcomes and a prospective validation of their relevance in patients with Crohn's disease are needed.