Newly diagnosed but positive about treatment!

Hi everyone,

I am new to the forum but have been reading it for a while since I have been unwell.  I finally got a diagnosis of mild crohn's disease in the ileum.  My GE gave me prednisolone and then maintenance treatment with pentasa but he also suggested that there is a trial coming up soon that I could enrol in which is the triple antibiotic regimen against MAP.  Anyone on this treatment at the moment?

Hope everyone is keeping well!

I am new to the form also but have been searching for help for my daughter. I am very interested in the MAP factor and would like to know where the clinical trial being conducted that you spoke of is located. Any information would be greatly appreciated to point us in the right direction.

Just out of curiosity, why would you start a trial when you've only been recently diagnosed? Does your doctor not want to try any of the meds out there first before starting a trial? I think I would be afraid that I'd get the placebo and get worse during the trial, and require even stronger drugs. Of course that's just my initial reaction after reading your post. I'm not judging you, I'm just curious if your dr suggested the trial along with other options.

The pentasa is currently working pretty well so when I next see my GE (about 4 months) I will tell him that. He just mentioned the trial to me and said that some patients had been responding very well to the antibiotic therapy and that I could consider enroling in it if I wanted to. He said it was totally up to me if I wanted to try it. I live in Scotland in the UK so not sure what treatments other patients are currently on.

since you were just diagnosed, you are in a very fortunate position to give dietary methods a real good try before getting hooked on meds like the rest of us. seriously, check out the makers diet, the specific carbohydrate diet (scd), life with bread, elemental diet. they are all difficult and require you to make major adjustments in your eating habits and cook a lot of food and self discipline due to changes it makes to what you eat and the initial detox affect, but imho it is WAY worth it. if you stick it out for a few months, right now, imho, you have a very good chance of not becoming dependent on meds and thus experiencing a slew of long term side effects, like osteoporosis, anemia, extreme weight gain, lupus, etc etc etc. especially since you said you have a "mild" case, this could be your ticket to regaining your health sooner than you think instead of adapting to a new "normal" like the rest of us did. now meds do have their place, but imho, if you can control it without meds your body and your mental attitude and your life and your emotional state will be TONS better. most docs are oblivious to or discredit dietary means, so you'll have to do your own research. this forum is a good start - do searches on the diets i suggested to read the threads.

once you are done with your antibiotics, do a course of probiotics for a while to reseed your gut as the antibiotics will have killed it all off.

best of luck!

Here is a GI talking about that treatment with 3 antibiotics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crm4pKz6X2M