Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) are the two major types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We conducted a comprehensive review of meta-analyses to summarize the reported effectiveness of different drugs for IBD. We performed a literature search and a total of 110 meta-analyses from 66 articles were summarized and re-analyzed (62 in UC and 48 in CD). In summary, 5-ASA was more effective than placebo in both induction and maintenance treatment of UC, but there were conflicting results on the effect of 5-ASA on the induction treatment or relapse of CD. The use of immunomodulatory agents in the induction or maintenance phase of UC and CD using immunomodulators appeared to be more effective than placebo, but the results were impacted by small number of patients, discordant results with the largest study and risk of biases. Anti-TNF-α and anti-integrin therapeutic antibodies in both, induction and maintenance, showed a better efficacy than placebo in a large proportion of patients analyzed. Other agents, such as probiotics, antibiotics, omega-3, were shown to be more effective than placebo, but the same issues arose as stated above with the use of immunomodulatory agents. In conclusion, we performed a comprehensive review of meta-analysis on comparative efficacy of pharmacotherapy used in the management of IBD. Our review will augment our understanding of the treatment of UC and CD by providing a guideline for interpreting the statistically significant findings and discusses the optimal choice for IBD treatment.
Keywords: Anti-tumor necrosis factor-α; Crohn's disease; Inflammatory bowel disease; Ulcerative colitis.
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