Crohn's disease prognosis and early immunomodulator therapy: Results from the CONNECT study.

Background: It is unknown whether the treatment initiating time of immunomodulators such as thiopurines affects the course of Crohn's disease (CD). We evaluated the efficacy of early immunomodulator therapy (EIT) on the prognosis of patients with CD.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 1157 patients with CD who were enrolled in the CrOhn's disease cliNical NEtwork and CohorT study and received immunomodulator therapy. The patients were divided into an EIT group and a conventional therapy group based on whether immunomodulators were initiated within six months after being diagnosed with CD. We compared the rates of intestinal surgery, bowel complications, and hospitalization because of CD between the groups.

Results: Patient age at diagnosis and sex were not significantly different between the two groups. The mean duration of follow-up was 105.8 ± 51.5 months. A Kaplan-Meier analysis identified that the EIT group was superior to the conventional therapy group in terms of delaying surgery (P = 0.017). In multivariate analysis, EIT was an independent predicting factor associated with delaying the onset of complications (P = 0.050). Patients were divided into two groups based on the year of CD diagnosis: from 1982 to 1999 (A) and from 2000 to 2008 (B). In group A, the time from diagnosis to the start of immunomodulatory therapy was longer (P < 0.001), and the time to first intestinal surgery was shorter than group B (P = 0.002).

Conclusions: The early use of immunomodulators was associated with a good prognosis as defined by a need for surgery and the occurrence of complications in CD in our multicenter study.