Effectiveness of treatment of moderate ulcerative colitis with prolonged mesalazine in real clinical practice

Abstract

Introduction.Ulcerative colitis (UC) is one of the severe therapeutic diseases. High doses of oral granular mesalazine are required to maintain clinical and endoscopic remission of UC, which may be sufficient and supposedly more acceptable for patients, as some studies showed that adherence to topical therapy is significantly lower than to oral 5-ASA drugs.Objective of the study. To evaluate the efficacy of therapy of patients with moderate left-sided ulcerative colitis (UC) and pancolitis receiving prolonged-release ethylcellulose-coated mesalazine.Materials and methods. The evaluation of the outcomes of treatment of UC patients who received prolonged-release mesalazine was carried out. We examined 87 patients with UC who received granular ethylcellulose-coated mesalazine, of those 38 (43.7%) men and 49 (56.3%) women. The average age of the enrolled patients was 38.3 ± 12.6 years.Results and discussion. After 2 weeks from the beginning of therapy with prolonged-release mesalazine, the majority of patients – 71 (81.6%) responded to the therapy. After 12 weeks, 71 (81.6%) of 87 UC patients, who responded to therapy with prolongedrelease mesalazine, remained in clinical remission. On average, the Mayo score in the group decreased from 7.6 ± 0.99 to 2.6 ± 0.25 points. There was a significant decrease in CRP, ESR, leukocytosis, and fecal calprotectin. After 26 weeks, Mayo score in the group of patients remained on average at the level of 2.2–2.3 points. The number of UC patients with colon mucosal healing was 32 (36.8%) patients. A year after the start of therapy with prolonged-release mesalazine, 69 (79.3%) UC patients who responded to therapy had a clinical remission, of those 32 (36.8%) patients had a clinical and endoscopic remission. During the year of observation, no case of surgical intervention or re-hospitalization due to exacerbation of the disease was recorded in patients with UC who achieved remission.Conclusions.Treatment of moderate active UC should begin with oral mesalazine ≥ 3 g per day in combination with topical mesalazine. The prolonged-release mesalazines are the most preferred