A combined oral and topical 5-aminosalicylates regimen is more effective than oral treatment alone in inducing remission of ulcerative colitis, a new meta-analysis confirms.
Reporting in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, the authors identified a dozen randomised controlled trials comparing oral and topical 5-ASA treatments for adults with active or quiescent UC.
For patients with active UC, they found that failure to induce remission was 35% less likely with combined 5-ASA therapy than with oral treatment. The number needed to treat (NNT) with the combined therapy to prevent one remission was five.
Topical therapy alone was superior to oral treatment for active UC, increasing the likelihood of remission by 22%.
For quiescent UC, risk of relapse was considerably lower with intermittent topical therapy than...
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