Welcome to the forum. I'm sorry to hear your son is struggling with such a bad flare. Biologics (remicade specifically) is the only uc medication to put my uc in remission. I've had no side effects from it.
The first class of ulcerative colitis medications is anti-inflammatory mesalamine and it's recommended rlto do 4.8 grams of lialda and a nightly rowasa for 3-4 weeks to see results. Your son has only tried this class of medications.
Second class of ulcerative colitis is immunomodulators like imuran/azathioprine or 6mp. They're very slow working medications taking 3 months to work. They require routine blood monitoring.
The third class of uc medications is biologics. Examples are remicade that you know about
, as well as entyvio, humira, and simponi. So there are other options. Entyvio is the newest of those medications and is a gut-specific immunosuppressant. Remicade, humira, and simponi are all very similar systematic immunosuppression meds (different primarily in how they're administered).
Every class of medications above the 1st suppresses the immune system and as consequence thereof increases infection risk, and increases lymphoma risk. Putting risks versus benefits into perspective is key. There's mid 60 percent. The most concerning side effect of biologics (and immunomodulators is lymphoma which has odds of 6 in 10,000 (or 0.06 percent) compared to 2 in 10,000 ( or 0.02 percent) for the general population. And 66 percent of those who get lymphoma are able to pit it into remission. To put those odds into perspective, the odds of death in a car crash are 1 in 133, from heart disease are 1 in 5. So you're talking really, really small odds.
The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America is the source for these statistics:
Webcast:
programs.rmei.com/CCFA139VL/presentation/player.htmlTranscript
: http://www.ccfa.org/assets/pdfs/risk-and-benefits-transcript
.pdf