Current Therapy in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Why and How We Need to Change?

Abstract

During the last few decades, major progress has been made in the treatment of the two major forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD): Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. However, the success of the most advanced forms of therapy is at best 50%, and most patients lose responsiveness with time and need to switch to alternative medications. This denotes that a therapeutic ceiling has been reached and brand new approaches are badly needed. This commentary first briefly reviews current and recent therapeutic approaches for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, pointing out their limitations. This is followed by an objective evidence-based discussion of why the current approaches are far from optimal, and the commentary is concluded by proposing how to change IBD treatment based on the holistic concept of network medicine, and how to implement precision medicine for IBD using artificial intelligence-based multi-omics analyses.