Thiopurines ‘effective long-term’ for ulcerative colitis

But a large study finds a much lower benefit of monotherapy for patients with Crohn's disease
Clare Pain

Thiopurine monotherapy is more effective and more likely to prevent colectomy in patients with ulcerative colitis than patients with Crohn’s disease, UK researchers say.

In the largest study to date, data obtained on enrolment in the UK IBD BioResource (established 2016) was analysed for nearly 12,000 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who had been on thiopurine monotherapy at some point.