Meta‐analysis: enteral nutrition in active Crohn’s disease in children

Abstract

SUMMARY BackgroundControversy exists surrounding the optimal treatment for inducing remission in active Crohn's disease.

Letter: enteral nutrition therapy for the induction of remission in paediatric Crohn's disease—Authors’ reply

“…In fact, our results are consistent with other systematic reviews that focused solely on children, making this the third meta-analysis in the last 17 years to find no difference between exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) and corticosteroids in the induction of remission in paediatric Crohn's disease [2][3][4] The Zachos study also combined adult and paediatric data and we suggest caution in combining these data sets as EEN may be more effective in paediatric populations. Due to this heterogeneity across age-strata, when conducting a study on the efficaciousness of enteral nutrition, it is imperative to examine children separately from adults in order to avoid the underestimation of the benefit of enteral nutrition.…”

Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Childhood and Adolescence

“…First-line treatment to induce remission in children and adolescents with Crohn's disease, regardless of severity, is exclusive enteral nutrition (EEN) via liquid or tube feeding (11,(30)(31)(32). Exceptions to this are children and adolescents who present risk factors (particularly anal fistulae): for this group, primary treatment is infliximab therapy (11).…”

Characterization of Selected Metabolic and Immunologic Markers Following Exclusive Enteral Nutrition of Pediatric Crohn’s Disease Patients

“…The efficacy of EEN in the pediatric CD population is well established [2,4,12]. In this study the standard of care, which consists of EEN as the sole source of nutrition for up to 8 weeks, was provided.…”