Background:
Thalidomide has been identified and its anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties clarified. this report expands our report of 2 entero-behçet disease children who developed significant steroid toxicity and improved dramatically with thalidomide.
Methods:
We studied the effects of thalidomide in 7 juvenile-onset patients with severe, recurrent intestinal involvement of behçet disease. thalidomide was given at an initial dose of 2 mg/kg per day, and the dose was increased to 3 mg/kg per day if necessary (3 of 7 patients) or decreased to 1-0.5 mg/kg per day according to the responses to the drug.
Results:
All 7 patients showed dramatic improvement in clinical symptoms with thalidomide therapy, and they successfully discontinued steroid therapy. patients receiving thalidomide were monitored for prolonged neurotoxicity, and the treatment and a few side effects were well tolerated by all patients.
Conclusions:
Our results indicate that thalidomide can be an efficacious medication in appropriately selected patients with some inflammatory bowel diseases with many chances of success.